System Info: Test time: Headmaster Avreone has requested your presence to test the improvement you’ve made during your training. Don’t screw it up.
Akamori stood before the empty barrier of the arena, bouncing on the toes of his boots to bleed off excess nervous energy. He needed to shake the restless feeling that had been building up in anticipation of his review fight with the Headmaster. He windmilled his arms several times. An exercise to loosen up and bring his heart rate under control by redirecting tension. Avreone looked bored and disinterested.
Her apparent apathy with him stoked his anger deep down. Anger was useful and fast becoming a comfortable emotion. Anger at the destruction of his village. At the deaths of his family and friends. Anger with the bastards who thought they could do whatever they wanted without caring for the others. Anger at every asshole on this too perfect world with thier too perfect attitudes.
Avreone stepped into the arena, ring all grace and lethality. She drew her spellblade hilt and fed it with some magic. A compressed blade of pure aether ignited with a soft hun. The blade looked like a solid crystal that glowed with feathered edges. She finally lifted her gaze to regard him, pinning him in a place like a hawk staring down a field mouse. Only this time, the field mouse had spent the last few months getting its ass kicked repeatedly. He was tougher now than he had been, and while there may not have been many combat specific lessons, he’d paid attention and picked up a few tricks.
“Now then, let’s see how far you’ve come.”
Akamori strode forward with a hand on the hilt of his blade. It vibrated in his hand eagerly. His armored boots struck the stone floor heavily as he stepped towards the gold rune etched ring at the base of the arena’s perimeter. His skin tingled beneath his armor as he passed through the protective and nullifying wards. He drew his blade free of its scabbard. The Honshu mythril steel had gleamed darkly in the war college’s ambient gold light.
He assumed a ready position, his feet shoulder width apart and blade tip facing Avreone. His gaze sat at her waist so he could watch her feet. “Always watch your opponent’s feet. The eyes, the face and waist can always move or face deceptively. But a man’s feet will always betray the truth of his intent.” His father’s words echoed in the back of his mind. He took a moment to scry her base stats.
System Info: Perception Check Results:
Name: Avreone
Divinity Rank: Mortal
Magic Rank: 4
Avreone studied him silently. A polar contrast to the sneering jests of Celine. Like two weary jungle cats, the pair began circling each other. Akamori’s body remained tense, like a drawn bowstring. Avreone’s movement slowed. She’d finished taking her measure of him. Time slowed, like being trapped in the maw of a black hole.
The elvan spell warrior blurred forward with her blade lunging for him. He brought his blade up to parry, but she flowed around his clumsy attempt like water. She slid below his blade and into his guard. She knifed out a palm strike for his kidneys and stabbing pain lanced into his side. A pained grunt hissed through his clenched teeth.
Akamori twisted, the pain in his side flaring like a hot fire poker stuck between his ribs. He slashed out with an awkward backhanded sweep that Avreone effortlessly evaded before drawing her own blade across his shoulder. Blood trickled freely from the shallow wound. In response, Akamori did the only thing he could think to, channeling his air magic through his arms and hands. His AP gauge dropped a point as the magic flowed from him to blade. He whispered a soft prayer to the air mother, and his blade thrummed and vibrated like a struck tuning fork.
“You’ve shown that spell often.” Avreone said.
Akamori didn’t reply with words. Instead, he launched into a flurry of blows. His blade drew sparks each time it crashed into the headmasters blade. He responded with an open palm strike to his stomach and followed with a light bolt spell at point blank. His armor blunted most of it, but he was still forced back to the edge of the arena. Avreone studied her blade for a moment and found its edge riddled with notches and dents from his strikes. A few cracks threatened to spider web out on the blade.
Avreone’s eyes glowed with white and gold magic as he trailed a hand along her blade several times like a wet stone. When she finished, he noted her sword had returned to its previous luster. The act cost her aether points, which he felt a better trade. She eyed him with casual interest now. Was that the beginning of a grin?
“Fascinating tactic. You either ruin my blade, or cost me points to mend the damage. And now you know I can repair it as well.”
Akamori maintained his stance and resumed his slow circling of his headmaster. She was giving him way too much credit, but his father had counseled him against giving away free intelligence. If she felt she was underestimating him, then doing away with the idea he was as good as the now thought wouldn’t help him. A heartbeat extra passed, and the two crossed blades again.
Avreone opened with a conservative slash. Akamori parried the strike away and rebounded with a followup slash that threatened her torso. She casually sidestepped the attack, flicking her blade out in an improvised stab. Akamori twirled his blade, a small gust of air assisting the reaction as his sword knocked the aether blade away.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
He needed to be faster than her. Instinctively, he knew his void magic could allow him to teleport, using the umbral plane to change his geo-spatial position. That would have to do, he mentally decided. Her blade flashed in for his chest.
Now! He spent the aether points feeding the magic into his armor. His skin tingled as the spell opened a body sized hole in reality that he fell into. The Umbral Plane wrapped him in cold, dark silence. He immediately felt uncomfortable in the dark as a primal fear took root. He was being watched. Light blinded him as an Akamori shaped hole appeared made of pure light. He emerged in the light plane behind her.
Avreone responded with a reverse stab of her blade. An instant before impact, he channeled another blink spell and fell back into the dark. This time, he popped back into existence to her flank and two spells. A lightning bolt head on, and a void bolt to his side. Avreone squared her shoulders and blocked the lightning strike head on. Defensive wards flared to life and discolored under the frontal assault. She withstood the frontal attack no worse for the wear until she cried out in pain as a blast caught her in the back.
Behind her, a small portal stitched itself shut. She turned back to him and channeled more magic to heal the wound on her back that dissolved flesh down to bone and sinew. She let the rags of her shirt fall free and his cheeks flushed as he immediately glanced away. She studied hun for a moment, but confusion was evident.
“While it was an interesting tactic, you burned a lot of magic in a very short span. Why?”
“It’s the only advantage I have right now. Pound for pound, you’re the better one with a blade. My only advantage is surprise and magic. Does me not good if I don’t make use of it.”
She pieced together his plan and nodded approvingly. Her spellblade hissed and drew itself back into the hilt. His own weapon thrummed in disappointment. He sheathed the blade with a pat on the hilt. There’s always be more fights.
“That will do, I think. When you came to us, you were little more than a child with a blade. Fighting on pure instinct. Over the course of a few months, you’ve grown. Your strategies are more aware, less reactive, and show the makings of a great warrior. You’re not there yet, but you can be if you stay the course.”
He blinked. Her assessment carried none of the usual demeaning he’d grown used to. She spoke to him almost like his father might. He felt his throat tighten at the thought and swallowed the grief down hard.
“Thank you. Does this mean you’ll tell me more about my style?”
She smirked and nodded reluctantly. “If you could string such a word to it. But a promise is a promise. Yes. Cenine, could you grab my spare top from my office, please?”
“At once.”
He sighed at the reaction. Ah well. Guess there was no use in getting bent out of shape about it. She did try it seemed.
“The stance you use looks a lot like Bahumet’s stance, but it’s sloppy. Unrefined. It comes from the dragon wings. Bahumet was revered as the greatest warrior the dragons ever produced. He was called the Destroyer on many occasions.”
He set aside how the originator of the form was called the destroyer. Again, the name bounced around his mind. Familiar and distant, like a locked away memory. “Ok. So I’m rusty. What makes it so special?”
“It favors aggression. Power, speed, and offense. But you lack a firm enough grasp of it to full use it. You still largely react to your opponents. Your wit has served you well, but if you give up the initiative to your enemy, you allow them to dictate the terms of the engagement.”
“So once I fully understand the stance, I can be a more capable swordsman.”
“Precisely.”
He frowned. His mission with Morwen weighed heavily on his mind. How could he ever improve if he never had the time to? He supposed it was asking the galaxy too much to hold itself together long enough to give him 6 good months to train.
“Speak your mind, apprentice.”
“I have to leave. Soon. It’s… important. But I’ll finish my training when I return. I swear it.”
“I believe you.” She said finally, after a long moment. “And just to make sure, there’s something else I want to give you.”
She turned and took a replacement top from Cenine mid stride. He followed her out of the arena. The pair made their way to the grand temple. Past a contingent of golden armored knights. Down a winding marble staircase deep into a cavern that glowed the deeper they progressed.
Akamori stood at the foot of the stairs, blinking. A large golden pool sat before him. This close to the pool, he felt peaceful, serene. He turned to Avreone curiously, and she gestured for him to advance on the pool.
“Go. Drink. This is the golden well. We give few permission to allow access to the pool, but as a light wellspring, death is rare. Seeing as in one such individual with permission to allow access, I’m giving you permission to drink. Go.”
He turned back to the golden pool, or felt welcoming, like a warm fireplace in the cold. He approached and kneeled down. It was thicker than water, white and golden, with motes of gold winking here and there. Both his armor and blade felt anxious. This was the polar opposite of the void.
He reached down with gauntleted hands into the wellspring. His hands tingled from the raw magical power contained in the pool. Slowly, he brought a handful to his lips and drank. Unlike the void, this was warm, welcoming, and sweet. He quickly went after a second and third scoop. He drank eagerly and suddenly he wasn’t in his own body anymore, but the mind of a god.