Lightning flickered over distant waves as the two warriors faced each other. The storm lay too far out for the blast of thunder to be heard, and their meeting was preceded only by the stirring of a restless wind.
Only ten long strides of trampled coastal gravel separated the two. It crunched softly beneath a steel sabaton as one knight shifted his step ever so slightly to the left. He adjusted his grip on the ornamented handle of his maul, a long pole studded with tiny jewels upon which a two-faced hammer had been grafted. The loose rocks beneath him shivered as the head of the weapon glided over them.
His opponent stood still and serene as an aged tree, the green scales of his armor turned to brass by the scattered blades of sunlight breaking through the gray sky. His plumed helmet, crowned in metal antlers, shadowed all but the calm glint of focus in his eyes. This second knight held a long, slender sword in his right hand and a tower shield shaped like an oak leaf in his left.
A second breeze stirred both warriors’ decorative surcoats, made the little bells and fetishes on their armor rattle. The sun beams set their steel to shining and reflected bright on the medals they wore around shoulder and waist, each the mark of an honor gained or a land visited, each trapping precious memories and nostalgic scents inside.
The warrior with the maul wore dark gray iron inlayed with images of snarling hounds and wizened trolls. He was from a mountain realm, stocky and strong, his weapon as good for cracking the stone skin of feral dwarf giants and the vaults they guarded as for laying low other men. His helm covered his entire head and face, leaving only a thin slit for the eyes and a scattering of breathing holes like freckles beneath.
His opponent was tall and festooned in autumnal colors, like some hunter lord out of an old fable. He held an elegant sword entwined with living vines from pommel to hilt. Ashen brown hair spilled from his bright helm.
They were not alone on the field, but they were the last to bare fangs at one another. The wounded and surrendered sat, crouched, or lay limp on the gritty terrain around them, forced to wait for the conclusion of their melee to play out before they could rest or tend to their injuries.
A young man with a warrior’s braid and garments of white and blue robe beneath his half-plate sat on a cracked boulder nearby, a heavy swordspear propped against his seat. He leaned forward, his youthful face intent on the duel. He had not yet cleaned the blood from his weapon, and spared not a glance for the still body sprawled nearby.
Over the disquiet sea, more lightning flashed. This time, the muted rumble of distant thunder did reach the fighters.
The hammer wielder moved first. The enchantment woven into his helm made his furious shout a brassy growl, and in a storm of scattering rock and wind he brought his weapon down on the field. Hard packed sand and solid rock erupted in a splintering line near thirty feet long, shredding its way toward his opponent. Along that line, jagged stone teeth punched upward like falling dominoes in reverse.
A two-pronged attack. The initial shudder of disrupted earth made the scaled knight stumble, leaving him off guard for the ensuing phalanx of emerging rock.
He righted himself, making it look as though he used the trembling ground to propel that motion, then moved with a flicker of speed that beggared belief and tricked the eye. Like a tumbling leaf on an errant breeze, like a sparrow taking flight, he flashed into motion. Dodging each stone blade even as it burst up to skewer him, he pirouetted toward his opponent on elf-light feet.
He leapt, a maneuver that should not have been possible in his heavy coat of scales and plates of steel, nor with the weight of a shield barely more than a head shorter than himself. His steel shoes lit sparks across a tooth of stone kicked up by the hammer wielder’s technique, turning that weapon intended to bow him into a stepping stone to his own victory.
If the mountain knight’s eyes widened beneath his helm, it could not be seen through the mask. But he watched, transfixed, doing little more than lifting his armament in a half hearted defense.
The Ironleaf landed, skidding to a stop several paces behind his opponent with his shield upraised as though to meet a charge and his blade stretched to the side. The residue of morning rain scattered around him.
The mountain knight started to turn, stumbled drunkenly, then collapsed to one knee with a grunt and a metallic clank. Blood emerged from the closely fit plates of dark steel encasing his leg. Only a light coating of it touched the tip of the other fighter’s sword, mixing with a sheen of dew.
The Ironleaf straightened, turned to study his foe, and spoke in a light, melodic voice only the two of them could hear. “Do you yield, ser?”
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The mountain knight’s clenched teeth and pale face could not be seen beneath his helmet, but that must have been his expression by the way he propped his weapon on the ground and tried to stand. His whole body shook, as though the whole weight of the ambivalent sky pressed down on him. He rose by inches, let out a gasp, and sank to his knees. His bent posture went from a defiant stiffness to a weary slump in a moment.
His magicked helm made his next words a bestial growl, masking the resignation they might have otherwise betrayed. “I yield, Ironleaf. You got me good.”
His words carried, echoing with a force the meager glamour on his armor could not have conjured on its own. They turned into a rolling thunder, a wave that tumbled over the twin arcs of basalt wall rising to either side of the field, and the rising tiers of stands above them.
Jocelyn gave his defeated opponent a moment’s regard, then turned his eyes up to the sheltered box where the Emperor and Empress sat, surrounded by their guards, fellow monarchs, and favored vassals. The royal shelter was carved into a great pillar of white stone upon the southern face of the Coloss, its face coated in complex designs and clever deformities from which the pale, still figures of gargoyles watched.
But his eyes slide from that grimly beautiful tower, to a lower shelf where a line of red and black robed figures stood. Among them was an aged woman with a sallow face and the golden circlet of an archclericon, her thin neck bowed by the weight of an iron trident.
Jocelyn drew in a deep breath to address the stands, the scattering of already beaten warriors around him, and the cruel priests who had started this ugly affair. The ancient arena’s power carried his words just as it had his defeated foe’s, letting all present hear them clearly.
“I have won. By my sword, I have proven the Lady Laessa of House Greengood innocent of all accusation levied against her. Does the Priory of the Arda accept this result, and agree to surrender their claims?”
Though he was too far to see her face clearly, he watched the new Grand Prior stiffen. Jocelyn felt tension go through him like a spike of ice. Sweat worked its way down his cheek, soaking into the leather padding inside his helmet.
But before the Priory’s leader could spit whatever toxin had been building behind her lips, a man in a black uniform and black cape stepped forward to address the field. He had a gaunt, scholarly face and bowl-cut brown hair, the red trident of Inquisition pinned to his shoulder.
“We accept this result, and surrender all ire toward the young lady. If this satisfies His Grace, then we shall no longer pursue the matter.”
Jocelyn looked again to the royal box. The Emperor held up a hand encased in a shell of filigreed gold. That dismissive wave was his only answer.
Shrewd man, the Ironleaf thought. Treat this like a tiring distraction, and you keep the Priory on the back foot and the people doubtful of them.
Also curious the enigmatic Presider spoke for his faction. That did not seem to bode well for the spitting viper they’d voted into command. Jocelyn wondered if he should feel comforted by that, or trepidatious.
“That’s it?” Siriks Sontae griped from his rock. “All this fuss, and they just let it go?”
The swirling eddies of wind did not catch the young warrior’s voice for the stands. Jocelyn wasn’t quite certain how that worked, and why some words they could speak normally and others the Coloss enhanced. He ignored Siriks, all too glad for this sad dispute to be done.
His eyes went to the girl this matter was all about, or at least the one who’d found herself unwilling mascot to it. Laessa Greengood stood among her relatives and allies, most prominently the Grimhearts. She’d been given a spot of honor directly below and to the left of the Empress, who sat beside her husband on the royal spire. A not-so-subtle snub to the Priory, there. No older than twenty, Laessa’s expression seemed shocked, like she couldn’t quite believe the result.
Somewhere within Jocelyn, something serpentine and hungry stirred from its fitful slumber. He had been cautious during the fight, keeping himself from feeling too impassioned, maintaining his stoic calm for fear it might sense the violence and emerge.
He had let his guard down for just a moment, letting himself feel satisfied in success, and the Other had sensed it. It followed the direction of his gaze, and let out a greedy hiss that thrummed through his soul.
You have saved her. Now claim her. Make her yours. Belongs to you. Kill the rest. Let all know you are mightiest. Kill. Claim. Take. Feast. Rule.
Jocelyn drew in a sharp, shuddering breath and fought the presence down. He would not lose control here. He was himself. He was human. He was not that thing.
She is not mine, she is her own. I am my own. You are a parasite.
The Other bared its teeth at him in that abstract place it resided, both real and unreal, like an unspoken thought. It retreated back into the shadowed recesses of potentiality, and went quiet.
But not gone. Always there, and always ready to test him. Jocelyn breathed hard from more than just the fresh exertion of battle. He caught the eye of the Cymrinorean, who was smirking at him, and quickly averted his gaze. He almost missed one of the Grimheart men stepping forward, his hand on Lady Laessa’s shoulder as he pumped a fist into the air.
Jocelyn felt a stab of anger, and it wasn’t all the wyrm.
“Do you hear!?” Gerard Grimheart’s voice boomed into the sky. “Tell all you meet! She is not a witch! She is not guilty! LAESSA IS INNOCENT!”
And the thousands packed upon the high walls of the Coloss began to roar.
image [https://i.imgur.com/PXox7O8.jpeg]