The first time D’Argen and Vah’mor ever sparred only for fun, D’Argen walked away with so many bruises that they both rushed to Simeal. The idea of one of them hurting another one was so foreign. It took many years for them to realize that the mahee’s protection of itself did not count when it was for the betterment of them all. It took even longer for D’Argen to truly understand what that meant.

Back then, just the thought of hurting another piece of himself with malice and anger was immediately wiped away. He could get annoyed and angry at his others, but not actually hurt them. It was the same for his own body. Just the thought of hurting himself was wiped from his mind before it was even fully formed.

The mahee, however, worked in mysterious ways. He was able to cut his palm to give his blood for Simeal to study. He was able to run through a forest where the trees tried to tear his limbs off if he was not precise enough. He was able to fight back against Vah’mor with a smile on his face and a sharpened sword. He was even able to slam the door in Yaling’s face or shove Abbot away from him with force.

Never to hurt though.

Never to the detriment of the mahee.

Never with the intent to actually kill.

Not like how Vah’mor attacked him now.

D’Argen scrambled on the empty space and tried to make it work to his advantage even as he tried to run away. Vah’mor had a bit of his speed, but not enough to actually match D’Argen. In neither set of memories. And it would not be the same in this place. D’Argen decided it to be so.

The thought was enough. Vah’mor’s movements slowed even as they remained as graceful as ever. D’Argen dodged under another swipe of Vah’mor’s glaive. He flipped off a desert rock as it turned to sand to avoid the back swipe of the second blade at the end of the glaive. When he landed on a platform higher up, Vah’mor followed. It collapsed under him, turning into nothing at all. He could not concentrate on both creating the places for his feet to land and on avoiding Vah’mor’s attacks.

A weapon.

He needed something to—

When he raised his hand to block Vah’mor’s blade, he had a dagger in his hand instead of Varuba’s stone. It was small, the blade so thin it was a surprise it could even hold against the weight of the glaive, but held it did. And the guard was able to stop the curved blade from the glaive from sliding into his hand. He pushed with all his might, putting just enough mahee into his arm to speed it up and give it more momentum.

Vah’mor spun away with the glaive as if the parry was nothing at all.

It hurt. D’Argen clutched at his chest and tried to breathe through the pain of using his mahee. Why would the mahee allow him to hurt himself so much?

Like… like Lilian did. The same way Lilian, somehow, found a loophole. And it was not just Lilian. Arehal had made D’Argen bleed to prove a point. Did that count?

Vah’mor visible hesitated. Their face softened. They shook their head and then came at him again, another smooth arc of the glaive that had just enough of D’Argen’s speed behind it to make him stumble.

A second dagger. D’Argen always had two on him. The smaller blade on the back end of the glaive was even more curved than the main one and it came too close to his fingers. He pushed the dagger down with all his strength and then dropped it, throwing Vah’mor off balance.

Instead of taking the opening to stab with his one remaining dagger, D’Argen jumped back and started running.

The small cliff he was on earlier was not too far from the top of Sky Mountain. Three or four days walking.

But it could have been another outcropping of rocks further up, where the trees were sparse. The faint outlines of a forest that had started to shimmer into place faded away to rocky ground covered in large patches of snow. It crunched under his feet even if he could not see it.

It also crunched under Vah’mor’s steps. D’Argen jumped out of the way as he heard those steps speeding up and nearing. He avoided the blade of the glaive but the staff of it swiped at his temple. His vision swam from the impact, and he lost balance. He was barely able to block the continuing spin from the glaive with his dagger when he saw two blades coming at him instead.

His sword would have been long enough, but try as he could, it would not form in his hand.

His bow! That was long enough.

The glaive hit the metal of his bow hard enough to rattle his hand and hurt his wrist and elbow. It slid off the curve and then stopped in the mechanism that snapped one of the bow’s arms out. If only it that mechanism would work in reverse and—

The string on his bow snapped, the metal sharp enough to cut at D’Argen’s face. But the mechanism whirled loudly. It clacked like it was broken the bottom arm of the bow quivered then broke from its shape. Instead of bending back toward him as it was meant to, it bent forward. It trapped the glaive’s blade between the two metal pieces.

D’Argen twisted the bow and then continued it into a twirl with both hands. The same twirl Vah’mor had taught him when fighting with a staff. It ripped the glaive out of Vah’mor’s hands and sent both it and the bow flying. D’Argen knew the drop beside them was a long one. They both watched as the glaive and bow disappeared into the distance below them.

“Huh, I wasn’t sure that would work,” D’Argen said, finally having a moment to breathe.

When he looked at Vah’mor, he was faced with endless black eyes instead of the silver moons he was so used to being on that face. Vah’mor charged him without a weapon at all. D’Argen slipped off an invisible edge and into a pile of snow. Vah’mor jumped down after him without any pause.

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D’Argen’s single dagger was still in his hand. The thought of plunging it into Vah’mor’s falling form had him recoil. The thought remained even as he sank deeper into the snow when Vah’mor landed on top of him.

The first punch to his jaw shocked him enough for the snow to disappear under him. The second punch to his temple had him dropping his dagger. He brought his arms up to protect his head. The next punch landed in his ribs. He heard the cracking of bone louder than anything else before and thought for a moment his ribs were broken. It was the wrong thought to have because he suddenly felt one of the jagged bones move out of place and steal his breath.

One more punch, and the bone would rupture his lung, if not his heart.

The punch landed a bit lower and avoided the fragile bones. It did not avoid his gut.

Somebody. Anybody. If they would just help him. How was he supposed to get Vah’mor off him and to stop hurting him? He tried to curl up, to protect all the sensitive spots, but the most dangerous were his throat and his core. His arms were protecting his throat and Vah’mor could not reach his core, not unless—

Anybody!

Yaling! Abbot!

Suddenly, Vah’mor flew off him and D’Argen felt hot blood land on his arms and face. There was so much. When he looked at where Vah’mor had landed, their arm was gone and in its place were the black tendrils of ink and smoke. They crouched and shifted their weight. D’Argen knew that pose. They would lunge at him and—

A wall of ice blocked his view for barely a moment before D’Argen realized it was not ice. He saw the sharp edges, tiny engravings on a row of dozens of daggers. They were all connected to a piece of metal and a streak that, even without him seeing colour, he knew was red. The solid blade on the other side of that line of blood was wider than D’Argen’s handspan.

This was a sword D’Argen felt like he knew well, even if he had not seen it in almost a millennia.

But… Thar could not be here. Lilian said so.

Leda, the sword Thar had named and given pronouns to as she came from his own blood and self, melted away into nothing at all and Thar’s white robes became dirty and dark. When Vah’mor finally lunged, they were in the air for barely a moment before they were blown back by a gust of wind so strong that they flew head over heel.

Lilian had both their metal fans out and open. D’Argen’s mahee was hurting as if he was using it even if he had closed it off when Vah’mor first punched him.

“Run!” Lilian shouted.

D’Argen could do nothing but obey. He got up on shaky legs and aimed for the path between barren trees that he recalled. One of his eyes was already swelling. All he saw was white, white, and white, so he closed it. He had to cradle his ribs as his entire body ached, but soon… the next step took him over a small lip and then sliding down and down through soft soil. There was no snow, the ground still too hot from his impact with it. Even the water had evaporated. The crater was an almost perfect circle that took the top of the mountain off and cleared it of all the snow that had settled there over the years.

He slipped in the ashes and burned ground and fell hard enough to make him dizzy. Everything was making him sick. The touch of hot earth, blackened from the heat but invisible in the white space, made his hand ache. The other was starting to get wet from where he tried to keep his ribs inside and not piercing his organs.

The crunch of snow, the snap of rocks, the slide of burnt earth—

D’Argen forced himself not to throw up as he rolled out of the way. Vah’mor landed where D’Argen had been a moment ago. They had their glaive again. They moved so fast and swung up and high then down with so much strength—

Lilian was suddenly there, sliding through the empty. Their metal fans were able to keep Vah’mor’s blade from cleaving D’Argen in two. The pressure caused one of the fans to crack and Lilian’s arms to shake. They screamed.

D’Argen rolled out of the way just as the fans both faded away into nothing and Lilian’s form turned into wisps. Vah’mor’s blade hit the empty where D’Argen had just been lying so hard that he felt the vibrations all the way to his broken ribs.

D’Argen stumbled up, turning his back on Vah’mor in search of—

The hot line of pain against his back had him falling back to his knees and then further. The pain from his ribs doubled and covered up the cut at his back. Then his mahee started hurting again. There was no follow-up attack.

“Go! Go!” Lilian shouted even as Vah’mor turned their attention to them.

D’Argen knew Lilian could not win. There was no way. His mahee hurt as Lilian tried to use the winds to speed themselves up, to keep out of the way, to keep up with Vah’mor. When hot blood hit the ground, it sizzled and caused a spark. Into tinder. The wall of fire was tall enough to keep Vah’mor at bay for a little longer. It was not enough to keep D’Argen from hearing Lilian’s pained groans as they were being attacked.

The centre.

It was his impact that created this almost perfect circle.

And then he saw it. As if it had always been there. Everything was still white, D’Argen did not have a sense of direction or distance. All he knew was that the fire behind him was becoming smaller while the silver blade in front of him grew.

Lilian shouted and D’Argen hesitated.

No.

He reached for his sword.

The glaive came down too fast for him to even think about opening his mahee. The blade was so sharp. It cut through his bracer as if he was not wearing it at all. It cut through flesh and bone without stopping at all. D’Argen screamed from shock more than the pain of it. And then the pain came, and he screamed even louder.

Vah’mor stared at D’Argen as he tried to crawl back and away, his torn back screaming at him and clutching his cut arm to his broken ribs. It all throbbed in time with his pulse. The entire world started throbbing.

Lilian was nowhere in sight but D’Argen had seen Thar earlier. He recalled the man’s pristine white robes. His long white hair. His white eyes. His white blade.

Nothing happened.

Vah’mor stepped toward him. D’Argen’s feet could not find purchase in the dead ground as he tried to crawl away. He did not dare turn over to crawl. Vah’mor approached him like some sleek hunting cat, all black and deadly. There was no life at all in those strange black eyes and there was no expression at all on their face.

The pain was making his vision double and blur at the same time. Then it tripled and all he saw were grey smudges.

Why?

Why would the mahee want him dead so bad?

The grey blur in front of him stopped and then jumped back. It sharpened for a moment even if it still split in two. Then the grey became lighter. D’Argen squinted until his vision sharpened enough for him to see—

Vah’mor was fighting nothing at all. The white around them was there but it was… the black of Vah’mor’s robes was starting to tear apart and float away from them. The black tendrils where their missing arm was were becoming smaller. They started turning inward until it was not black tendrils floating out but white ones floating in.

Vah’mor swiped at the air with the glaive, but it did not stop the white from spreading over their body. The edges of their black eyes had those same white tendrils. As D’Argen watched, Vah’mor’s face rounded off and softened. Their long hair became lighter and then…

Lilian stood there, holding D’Argen’s sword instead of the glaive in their one hand.

D’Argen gritted his teeth. He forced himself to bare his throat. Bare his chest. Ignore his broken ribs to try and take a deep breath. Ignore his cut off arm to let it go and stop putting pressure on it.

When he looked at Lilian, he only nodded.

Lilian had tears in their eyes. “I am sorry,” they whispered.

Being stabbed by his own sword did not hurt as much as he thought it would. Not as much as he remembered it to.