THE SWORD TITAN HAS BEEN SPOTTED OUTSIDE BERN.

WE REPEAT, THE SWORD TITAN HAS BEEN SPOTTED OUTSIDE BERN.

CHALLENGE HAS BEEN ISSUED. ASSEMBLY FORCES HAVE BEEN DISPATCHED, AND COTERIE AGENTS ARE ON THE SCENE. PLEASE REMAIN CALM. PLEASE REMAIN CALM.

This train will arrive at its next stop in…ten…minutes. Our next stop will be…Sante. This is an indirect service to Bern. When disembarking, please exit the train in a calm and orderly fashion.

Calm.

What a fucking joke. I was anything but calm.

I looked towards Alyss with panic writ plain upon my face, and saw the same reflected in her own two eyes. Yet, incredibly, Prince Price seemed unalarmed.

“Oh, hoh,” he exhaled deeply, “oh, Priest. Thank the Priest.” He performed a peculiar gesture with his one hand, and wrist, and chest that I took to be a prayer of some sort. “Almost had a heart attack, there.”

“What’s going on?!” Alyss exclaimed, hands gripping tight at the edges of the table as she glanced frantically about us. “The train isn’t stopping?! Why isn’t the train stopping?!”

Her face paled.

“Surely, we can’t still be bound for an active Titan attack?!”

“I’m…what do you mean?” William started, confused. “It’s just Dainsleif. There’s no need to worry.”

Alyss goggled at him.

“How can there be no need to worry?!” She asked, shrilly.

“Oh, wait, that’s right,” he muttered. “You just have Sothoth in the west…hmmm.” He hummed, pensively tapping at the bottom of his chin. Then he waved his hand. “Well, there’s no need to worry,” he repeated.

“How can there be no need to worry?” Alyss repeated, fear fouling into anger, now.

“The Sword Titan only attacks one man at a time, my lady,” William replied, slowly. He grinned, clearly not one bit concerned. “Why, even should he decide to remain here for years, he’d not make a dent in our population.”

“I know he only attacks one at a time, my lord. I’m not an idiot,” Alyss snapped through tight-grit teeth. “But he kills every opponent who faces him. And, speaking personally, I’m not eager to fight a Titan who’s never lost a battle if your ranks of elite Blessed run out.”

“Elite Blessed?” William almost choked. “W–what are you talking about?”

Now Alyss just looked confused.

“What are you talking about?” She countered.

For a moment, he looked at her as if she was an idiot. Then, a wave of realization rippled across his face.

“Oh. Oh, you don’t know,” he recognized. “Actually, that makes sense, I guess. The dust trials were only a couple decades ago, after all.”

“Dust?” Alyss echoed, even more confused. “You mean, that ground-up crystal shit that gets mundies high? I know about it well enough. What difference does it make?”

“All the difference in the world,” William said, slowly. But his ponderousness was not borne of condescension, this time. No. Instead, a measure of excitement had begun to spread itself across his face. The way it did when he was interested about something. The way it did when he was fascinated by something.

Just like when he’d spoken about delving.

“We don’t use Blessed against the Sword Titan, heiress,” the prince said outright.

“Wh…how do you…” Alyss hesitated, frowning. “Dainsleif won’t fight mundanes. What do you mean?”

He smiled at her, knowingly.

“You’re quite right, of course. Dainslief will do no battle with those without Blessings,” he confirmed, adopting a calm, lecturing tone that, for some reason, deeply unsettled me. “And that, my lady, that precisely, is where dust comes into play.”

Alyss’s frown deepened.

Then, all of a sudden, she paled.

“Wait,” she whispered, “you don’t mea–”

“Refined grade 1 Entropic dust, re-suspended in saline solution, when administered intravenously at point-seven-five mg/kg, allows a mundane human of otherwise robust health to make war at a level relative to that of a Grain stage Blessed, for a mean period of seventeen hours, depending upon sex, age, and physiological condition,” the prince recited, a proud grin shining forth from his youthful face. “At which point the subject subsequently expires.

“A Dissertation on Synthetic Entropy, in the Context of Mundane Health and Ability, Kenneth Angstrom et al, 723 A.C.,” he went on, breathlessly. “His seminal paper. The one that made him Dean of Sciences at the Institute. A fascinating read.”

The color still hadn’t returned to Alyss’s face.

An awful truth was seeping its way into my bones.

I couldn’t say a word.

“Of course, they can’t actually fight like us,” the youth went on, obliviously and dismissively waving a hand. “I mean, not really. That would be ridiculous. What with such a high concentration of dust running through their veins,” he muttered contemplatively, adjusting his spectacles, “honestly, I doubt they can even think straight. After all, the psychological pathologies are just the same as low doses of dust, just–more severe. So, it’s not like they’re going to win.

“But, Dainsleif will fight them,” he went on, eagerly. “Oh, yes. He’ll fight them, alright. And how. Honestly, it’s all been a real coup. Lets us all sleep a bit easier, at night, y’know?”

Alyss and I stared at him.

“Just how often does the Sword Titan attack your cities?” I asked.

“Hmmm…I’d say…I’d say, perhaps once or twice a week, nowadays,” the Heir nodded to himself. “It’s been increasing, this past decade or so.”

“So you’re sending…,” I stopped, for a moment, and swallowed, taking a slow breath. My hands had clenched tight, without my direction. Fang glanced up at me abruptly, alarmed.

“You’re sending…hundreds,” I forced out, “of doped-up mundanes out to fight the Sword Titan. Every. Single. Week?”

“Oh, more than hundreds,” the young man replied, excitedly. “Far more! You see, we found that Dainslief’s retention is inversely-proportional to the number of combatants he duels against. No matter how skilled those combatants are. You can send one an hour, of course, but if you want him to leave quicker…well, you get the idea.”

He nodded quickly to himself, stroking his chin as he thought out aloud.

“Yes, it’s likely that the Sword Titan operates based off of some…some sort of satisfaction variable,” he mused. “Each time he arrives at a novel location, this variable is randomly determined. Each time he fights, its value decreases, and when it reaches zero, he leaves. A particularly intense duel will count for more, obviously, but a large number of duels can make up for that.”

Then he frowned, and tsked.

“I’ll admit, though, at this point I’m speculating.” He shrugged. “The science on this is far from settled.”

“You send more than one an hour,” I spoke without inflection.

“We send more than one a minute,” he corrected, still somewhat proudly. “I’ve studied it extensively, you see. Fascinating creatures, the Titans, are they not? I’m sure you’d agree. The Coterie’s written a number of pieces on them. In fact, though the discovery of dust was Angstrom’s, they were the ones who devised this particular strategy.”

“How many mundanes die, yearly, to the Sword Titan?” I asked.

“Oh, I couldn’t tell you that,” he replied.

“Your best guess,” I said.

“Honestly, I couldn’t even guess,” he shrugged. “Hundreds of thousands? Tens of thousands, certainly.” He quirked his head at me.

“…why do you ask?” He questioned, perplexed. “Don’t worry about the mundanes, it works out great for them, too. I mean, their families get a big payout. Well, big for mundanes, anyway. They way they live, it’s enough for a lifetime. Most of them have huge debts, and those get forgiven.

“Honestly,” he chuckled, “they can’t line up fast enough!

I opened my mouth, then closed it. I felt something pulsing uncomfortably in my stomach. Of course, a part of me piped up deep within. This makes sense.

How had I forgotten?

He’d been so nice, so naive, so normal, for a change.

But Prince William was an Aristocrat.

“And besides,” the prince finished, casually. “I’m sure it’s no different from your war with Sothoth. You use mundanes, there, too, don’t you?”

He was right.

We did.

Was that different?

A hint of disdain entered the Anglican royal’s voice and he sniffed, “At least here, we don’t keep slaves.”

He paused, awkwardly, and glanced to the side.

“Er, no offense, lady Nycta.”

I doubt Alyss even heard him.

Though I wasn’t looking at her, my deadened gaze still fixed resolutely on the cheerful Crat, Sensory Perception told me all I needed to know. Her prior panic had returned, and was directed my way, this time. Her eyes had locked upon me nervously, her hands kneading at each other underneath the table.

Perhaps she expected me to explode. Doubtless that would’ve done wonders for our reputation. Wonders for the story she and Caleb crafted for me, too.

Fang whimpered up at me.

I turned away from the prince to stare silently out of the train’s glass window.

And I didn’t say anything, and I didn’t do anything.

The prince himself, apparently just savvy enough to notice something amiss, but not quite enough to discern where he’d gone wrong, exactly, meekly directed a menagerie of further Agoge-related queries towards my companion, who eventually offered a sufficient number of gruff, one-or-two word answers for him to lapse into an uncomfortable silence.

And so we bore our way forth to Bern noiselessly. Peacefully. The next stop, Sante, came and passed us by.

Golden fields worked by tireless golems, rolling hills and hilltop manses, and dense forests broken by the occasional winding estuary, collectively representing the breathtaking wilds of northern Anglica and south Technocracy did little to quell the nausea that had made its home in the nethers of my stomach.

But why?

Why did I feel this way?

I was no stranger to violence. To brutality. To war. I’d never considered myself the particularly squeamish sort, and thought myself redoubled again in constitution following the events of the Agoge.

And Prince Price was right.

In the West, we had Soultaker. We had Vaultkeeper. We had the dreaded Horsemen. The Aristocrats back home clapped mundanes in chains, more oft than not, and sent them off to die in droves to Sothoth’s dreaded Spawn. Every word he’d spoke to me was true.

So why had he…bothered me so?

Because he seemed so normal.

Syn and Nycta were evil. There could be no doubt of that. Slavers and warmongers, torturers and knaves. They were monstrosity incarnate. Above nothing.

But then, they were so for a good reason.

Or, at least, for an understandable one. They were fighting a war. We all were. Against an undefeatable, indefatigable, ever-evolving foe. Sothoth wasn’t just one creature, and it didn’t just kill one man an hour.

And even more than that.

It was one thing for the dread Soultaker or the merciless Vaultkeeper to slay or make slaves of their fellow man, because, well…they weren’t good people. They didn’t try to be. Maybe they thought what they were doing was necessary, maybe they didn’t, maybe they just didn’t care.

But, at the very least, they didn’t think it was good.

But the Anglican did.

The way William, who, by all other conceivable metrics seemed to be a just and upright and generally good-natured fellow, spoke of drugging his own subjects by the more-than-thousands weekly, sending them off to certain death, sacrificing them so he and his might not risk their own skin…

William wasn’t Soultaker. He wasn’t Vaultkeeper. He wasn’t Vox. He wasn’t evil. He was an entirely normal, patently inoffensive, genuinely deceitless young man. Who absolutely didn’t care about genocide.

Because he absolutely didn’t care about mundies.

That was it.

That was it, fundamentally. That was what bothered me. That was the root of my nausea, my anger, my disgust. He didn’t despise us, like the Crats back home. He didn’t hate us, in any way. He just, fundamentally, didn’t see us as people.

Them, I reminded myself. He doesn’t see them as equal. You’re not one of them. Not any more.

Fuck that.

Maybe the sea captain was right.

Maybe coming here was a mistake.

The scenery rolled by steadily, entirely indifferent to my internal monologue. We were nearing the end of our journey, now. We’d entered the mountains not long ago, and were currently descending a series of winding twists and turns towards that great city nestled deep in between them. Over the crest of one final, white-tipped peak, I sharpened my eyes, pushed raw song into them, and saw it.

Great Bern.

It was the largest city in all the world.

Even from afar, even from above, it dominated the horizon. A vast expanse of shining steel towers, massive marbled mansions, and gilded guild halls. From this high up, it all resembled one giant, quilted carpet, a resplendent tapestry of wealth, luxury, and sophistication. A great, glittering sphere shaped of silver and sharp-cut glass stuck out from the high-rise in its midst, dispersing the sun’s gleaming rays every which way.

This was the jewel of Europe, and it was beautiful. And, just like everything in Europe, it was awful, too.

More than half the city was one giant, gaping slum.

Unlike Cambridge, which had been a disorganized patchwork of slums and city proper, this place separated the two into quite distinct areas by means of a great and splendid river which split the metropolis in twain. There was the relatively smaller eastern section, still larger than Talos on its own, representing the Blessed and their lofty domiciles, and then there was the sprawling western slums.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

I grimaced, and shook my head in revulsion, tracing back over to the wealthier districts, admiring the smooth contours and angelic flourishes on tower alcoves, moving further and further and further westerly, until…

Until I let out a sharp and strangled gasp.

My throat trembled. The hairs on my arms, and neck, and the small of my back stood at rigid attention. A pitifully small curse squeaked its way past my parted lips.

And my eyes traveled only upwards.

To where it hung.

High in the sky, scraping the clouds above Great Bern.

Higher than Talos’s tallest towers.

Higher than the mountains all around.

Higher, even, than DRAGON’s titanic warform.

A massive, floating sword.

It was gigantic. Gigantic.

Simply gigantic.

It hung motionless over Bern’s very westernmost wall, upside-down. Its sharpened tip pointed towards the city, casting monumental shadows over the gilded halls and great-manses so far below, a premonition of incumbent apocalypse. Its gargantuan hilt angled upwards, at the heavens, that the God for whom it had surely been forged might grasp it tight more easily.

It bore no embellishment. Not of any kind. No signature. No errant flourish. It was not wrought of gold, or silver, or platinum. It was not inlaid with jewels.

Its blade was simple steel, steel that was terribly notched, and marred, and dented, crenelated by the remnants of so many ancient wars.

Its handle was crude-hewn wood, and wound all about by rope of a fraying, rough-spun sort, seeming barely fit to hold a pair of sticks together.

Steel, and wood.

And nothing else.

It looked like it could split Earth Bet in two.

For it was more than a sword. More than a power. More than a phantasmal Shard. It was a pith of something so real and profound and fundamental that to look at it, even from so far away, nearly drove me mad.

I heard the clash of armies routing and roaring, the wailing of widows and widowers, the horrid gurgle that a lung coughed up when drowned in blood and the grating shriek of steel on steel. I felt my muscles ache, and my throat parch, and my tongue turn cracked and seeping. I wanted to fight until I could fight no more, to kill until there were none left alive, to wage war until all of existence bent the knee to me alone. I tasted blood on my tongue and reveled in it.

This was power. This was conquest. This wasn’t just a Noble Shard; it was so much more than that.

This was the very essence of a Warrior.

Its song deafened me from on high, colored the purest white and gold I’d ever seen, thick and writhing, spreading as an aura impossibly far. It saturated the sky above Bern to such an extent the city became shrouded from view, making my vision blurry and my eyes weep.

I’d never managed to observe from so far away before, but still, I knew its name.

~~~

Curseblade Dainsleif

Attunement: ARMAMENT//THE GLORIOUS(Cy) 29

Grain: Host of Adamant

Marble: Memetic Wounds

Core: I Rise to the Challenge

Body: STILLING Edge

~~~

An awful fear roiled up from within my gut.

It had access to the System.

It had access to Akashic’s fucking System. A Titan was using the System meant for Blessed, and Blessed alone.

“Taiven?”

My companion’s voice echoed numbly about my ears. She sounded concerned.

“Taiven? What are you looking at?”

I wrenched my eyes from the divine blade hanging taut above our heads, and saw her and the prince frowning at me.

She can’t see it.

“Taiven?”

Why can’t she see it?

Seeing Shards was Alyss’s power, not mine.

“Taiven?” She asked, her voice rising slightly with worry. “Is…something wrong?”

“Nothing!” I replied, far too quickly and too intensely, making the both of them flinch.

“No,” I tried again, in a normal voice this time. “No, it’s nothing. Just…enjoying the view. Is all.”

Alyss gave me an incredulous look.

“Ah, it is splendid, is it not?” Prince William, true to form, remained just as oblivious as ever. I glanced meaningfully at my companion as he did so, with what I hoped was a gaze that meant, we’ll talk about it later.

Thankfully, she relented.

“Chivalry has its wonders, yes, but there’s just no city at all like Bern,” the Crat continued, happily. “Oh, it’s good to be back.”

Right on time, the train’s inanimate announcer echoed him.

Attention, Aristocrats.

It said, calmly. As if there wasn’t a Titan just outside.

Attention, Aristocrats.

We have arrived at…Bern. This is our final stop. All passengers must depart the train. If you have misplaced your luggage, please see a customer service kiosk, and our staff will assist you.

Please mind the gap, between the train, and the platform edge.

We stepped off the train into a station ever larger and grander than the one in Cambridge, and were met immediately by a massive host of people.

They were exiting our train and others in throngs, by the hundreds, mostly Blessed but some well-dressed servants, too, hurrying along with great excitement and anticipation flushing their faces. Their conversation raised a considerable din within the somewhat-enclosed structure, and when we departed it for the city streets, the crowd grew only larger.

“What’s going on?” I shouted, as Berngoers jostled me and my two traveling companions every which way.

“What?! I can’t hear you!” the prince shouted back, leaning over towards me.

“What’s going on?!” I yelled, louder this time, spreading my arms wide. “What’s all the commotion about?”

William shrugged, and opened his mouth, but a member of the ever-present Blessed masses beat him to it.

“It’s Dainsleif!” A young woman cried out, stopping before us for a moment to catch her breath. “There’s been a challenger! A real, real challenger!” Her ludicrously lavish dress was considerably sullied by dirt and mud at this point, and being further fouled with each person that passed her brusquely by, but she didn’t seem to care.

“Not a mundy!” she gasped, grinning broadly. “Not a mundy, an heir! An heir! Can you believe it? The Tepes boy, I think! The older one, Sely…Sely-something.” She waved a beckoning palm our way, laughing as she darted back into the crowd.

“Sely-something!” She cried, giggling. “Come on! Come see!”

Alyss and I glanced at William.

“A–an heir?” He stuttered, nervously. “No. N–no, that’s…that’s impossible. She’s mistaken.

Alyss and I glanced at each other.

“She’s mistaken!” He maintained, fervently. “She’s mistaken, I’m sure of it.”

He didn’t look sure of it.

“It can’t be an heir,” he swore.

“The Tepes boy,” Alyss frowned, thinking. Her eyes widened, suddenly, and she glanced the prince’s way. “She didn’t mean–Piotr? The Prodigy?!”

“No, she didn’t,” he muttered, his expression growing grimmer with each passing moment. “The older one, she said. That means Vselin.”

“Oh,” Alyss said, quietly. “That’s a shame.”

“What’s a shame?” I asked, lost completely. “Why’s that a shame?”

“Let’s go see,” William replied, a scowl now spread across his face.

And without another moment’s hesitation, he strode quickly forward, joining the crowd in an uncharacteristic display of confidence, his eyes nevertheless darting apprehensively about as he did so.

Alyss followed quickly after him.

And, with no other option, I tailed them both.

They hadn’t answered my question but, ultimately, I supposed, it didn’t matter. Not really. It didn’t matter who the challenger was. It didn’t matter how strong they were.

No one and nothing in all of Bet could beat that which I observed.

It didn’t take long before we arrived.

The crowd had together thronged to the great western portion of the sprawling, winding, towering wall that served to separate the grandest city in all Europe from the wilds that surrounded it. In ages past, fortifications such as this one had been erected as part of a desperate defense against the monsters that were commonplace, emerging by the hundred thousands from unplumbed Maws.

With the rise of the Devlers’ guild, its utility had faded into antiquity. Nowadays, it was more a status symbol than anything else.

“Where are they?” Alyss asked curiously, frowning down over the wall, but not looking directly, her eyes instead flickering with shadow as she searched through her shades’ sight.

“There,” William replied, pointing to a certain section of ground some thousand meters, or so, away.

I didn’t need him to.

Our targets might have been near-invisible to mundane sight, but with my newfound control and the song to aid my vision, they might as well have been standing right next to me. I saw a modest sea of tents and impromptu structures drawn up from the earth, similarly to those we’d been met with outside the Frontier Maw. They were a hive of activity, a nest of commotion and exclamation. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, of course, sight being a good deal easier to enhance than sound, but I saw Blessed aplenty, all dashing this way and that, carrying steel and shouting orders.

And, towards the back of the camp, I saw a huddled-up host of perhaps one hundred miserable mundanes, surrounded on all sides by armed and armored guards.

My mouth contorted into a momentary snarl, but I fought it off just as quickly, turning my eyes instead to what lay just at the camp’s other side.

The Sword Titan.

It looked…awesome.

In the most literal sense of the word. Awe-inspiring. Magnificent. Graceful. I could see, now, why we called it Noble. Thin and lithe, like a gilded statue, lovingly crafted, given life by the Heavens above. A great golem, the likes of which mankind could never hope to reproduce.

Beautiful, and eerie.

For, it just stood there.

It just stood.

Watching them all, not one or two leagues away from the camp’s edge. Just watching. Waiting. Patiently. With an uncanny stillness of something not truly alive, and its glorious, white-gold longsword planted firmly in the ground.

Foes swarmed about before it, yet the Sword Titan stood still. There was no reason for it to worry. To prepare.

It already knew what the outcome would be.

Noble it might have been, less destructive than its kin, but Ewan’s words so long ago still held well true. It was, in the end, a murderer. A monster. The Warrior’s weapon, made for one purpose, and one only.

To kill humans.

I heard a commotion rise up from all around us, and noticed a fresh flurry of activity in the very furthest edges of the camp, those closest to the Titan in question.

“I can’t see,” Alyss muttered frustratedly, her eyes flashing black, her nose wrinkling. “There’s something stopping my shades from getting close, and I don’t wan–”

“Let us see clearly.”

My head snapped to the side as William’s voice boomed outwards, not at all as I was used to. It was commanding, domineering, thick with power and terrible purpose.

And I watched his Mnemonic Engine react.

It unfurled itself with that relentless glee so familiar to me, rushing out in countless ethereal tendrils of light-blue and just a hint of orange. It gave me a wide, respectful birth as it bore forth, reaching out to grab the very space before us, pushing and pulling and shaping the fabric of existence itself with an ease that took my breath away.

It stretched, and molded, and solidified, and a perfectly-circular region of air just in front of us three stuttered soupily into existence, representing with flawless fidelity the scene taking place leagues below.

“Ah, it worked,” the prince sighed, under his breath. “Excellent.”

Then he looked at us, and chuckled awkwardly.

“Er–that is–my power can be a capricious thing, um,” he explained, sheepishly adjusting his heavy spectacles. “At, uh, at times. Is that better?”

“Much,” Alyss admitted, sincerely. “My thanks, my prince.”

I couldn’t keep my jaw from hanging open.

His Shard had just warped spacetime.

His Shard had just warped spacetime, with a phrase. It’d contorted reality, demonstrating both chrono and choro-kinesis in equal measure, with an ease and competence that nearly rivaled my own ADMINISTRATION.

And all to watch something that was just a little fucking far away.

It was…so unnecessary.

There were so many easier, so many more efficient ways to produce such a result. A million easier ways. His command was so unspecific. His Shard could’ve bent light, magnifying his viewpoint telescopically. It could’ve enhanced his eyes, and Alyss’s, as well. It could’ve done anything other than what it did. Just how much raw Entropy had it consumed to execute such a herculean task?

They don’t know, I realized, belatedly. They don’t realize what it just did.

For Alyss, it was understandable. After all, she couldn’t see Entropy. She couldn’t see songs. She couldn’t see the ways Shards worked. But the prince, himself…

How could he not know?

Thankfully, neither of them noticed my shock.

A crowd was beginning to form around us.

It was obvious, really. The throng encircling us on each and every side had swiftly noticed Prince Price’s little trick, and not-so-slowly drew towards us. They muttered excitedly amongst themselves, eager to share in the crystal-clear picture, yet far enough distanced to remain respectful of those they’d now designated dangerous.

Far below us in reality, yet flawlessly reproduced above our heads thanks to a tunnel in space-time, an argument was taking place.

Represented on the floating circle, I watched a cluster of heavily armed and armored Blessed, most looking intensely uncomfortable, all gathered together around two principle figures.

The first was a man of veritably mammoth proportions, who had to be nearly ten feet tall and just about as wide and well-muscled, completely albino and hairless from head to toe. He wore a suit of splendid armor the color of pale moonlight, and a peculiar yet similarly-prodigious sword crackling with purplish energy was strapped over his back.

The second fellow was considerably shorter, even when compared to a man of average proportions. He was good-looking, that much was clear, with jet-black hair and thin, trimmed goatee, but his fine features were fouled by rage, his face flushed as he bellowed at the mountainous fellow.

Unfortunately, William hadn’t asked his Shard to enhance both sight and sound, so we still couldn’t hear them clearly.

But I heard the people all around us.

They were whispering furiously between themselves. Barely concealing their speculation. I heard names like Wergar, Vselin, Piotr, and Mila. I heard words like birthright, Agoge, failure and dishonor. But I knew neither to what, specifically, they referred, nor which names corresponded to which Blessed, below.

And further, no matter how much my own control and potence had grown, the ability to interact with and observe the songs of other Blessed from thousands of meters away remained beyond me.

Well, except for those of Titans, of course.

So I was forced only to watch in ignorance as the argument the two men were having reached its inevitable crescendo.

The albino giant looked more and more despondent with each passing second, firmness fading in favor of grim resolution, and after a particularly intense, spittle-producing wave of likely vitriol from the shorter man, he looked away, and stood aside. And the crowd of Blessed knights surrounding the duo parted.

And the short, dark-haired man stepped forth.

Towards the Sword Titan.

He breached the confines of the sea of tents and temporary fortifications, closed his eyes, shook his limbs out loosely, and cracked his neck back and forth. He looked at the Sword Titan, who remained just as motionless as ever, and he smiled.

And then he started to hit himself.

Not lightly, either.

I heard a chorus of gasps emerge as the short and handsome man, whom I now assumed could only be this Vselin, beat himself across the face and on the chest. He grasped his own fingers, and snapped them one by one, grinning as he did so.

With the two good ones he had left, he reached into a pocket in his fine, black-red leathers, and produced a sparkling healing draught. He downed it.

And he began again.

He broke bones, he tore ligaments, and he took one of the finely-embossed silver axes that adorned his back to his legs, and his arms, and the flesh of his stomach.

Then he healed, and he began again.

This went on for minutes.

With each fresh injury, the clamour of the crowd around grew louder. And I realized that I recognized this Blessing. I realized that I’d met this man, back in Talos, before the exam. Though I’d not even spoken with him, at the time.

This was Haemokinetic Enhancement. Almost certainly.

And, sure enough, each time the man hurt himself, I saw his muscles thicken. I saw his song grow minutely larger, deeper, fuller. I saw the veins bulge blackly from his face, and chest, and palms. At one point, I saw his wounds start to heal themselves, if slowly.

All the while, the Sword Titan simply watched.

Motionless.

Waiting.

At last, the short man downed one final vial, and laughed. His eyes were dark red, and drunken. His face had drenched in his own ichor, and when he smashed his closed, bloodied fists together lightly, the resultant shockwave was nonetheless potent enough to be heard all the way from the western wall.

It washed over the impromptu camp, unearthing several of the tents therein, sending the stalwart knights to their knees, and causing the crowd around me to cry out in fear and excitement.

It didn’t unseat the albino giant, though.

He just grimaced, and closed his eyes.

The short, bloody, brutalized man danced lightly from toe to toe, wrenching out and whirling about his twin silver axes, screaming something towards his effectively inanimate adversary. Obviously, I couldn’t hear what it was he said, but the meaning was clear enough.

The crowd leaned in.

Their eyes were wide.

Their mouths hung open.

The short man bent his legs, flickered, and vanished, the ground beneath him cracking. I narrowed my eyes, and spun up Acceleration.

And was met only with sour disappointment.

For all his pomp and gory preparation, the black-haired man hadn’t amounted to much. I was barely pushing twentyfold dilation, and already his ground-shattering motion had turned to a crawl, his outwardly-impressive speed slowed to a syrupy limp.

I frowned.

How, in the High Priest’s holy name, could this heir have thought he’d manage to beat a Titan? Even I could move faster than this.

Apparently the Titan in question shared my disposition.

I watched Dainsleif slide its gorgeous blade from the earth with a casual lethargy that was nevertheless comfortably double the heir’s own pace.

I watched the Titan stride towards its foe, unbothered by the dilated time, and got a rather abrupt and unsettling sensation of deja-vu. It was…strangely reminiscent of my own battle against the Kingsguard.

Dainsleif reached his adversary just as the heir’s eyes had begun to widen, but ages before he’d be able to react. The Sword Titan raised its arm.

And lopped off Vselin’s head.

I released my Mover Blessing, and was met with immediate outroar.

It was a chorus of moans, and gasps, and sighs, and cheers, and cries of horror. All around us the crowd was nearly rioting, shouting at one another, or at the figures down below, as if somehow they could hear. Some seemed angry. Some seemed dissatisfied. Some seemed stricken with grief.

Most just looked afraid.

Surely, they couldn’t have actually expected the heir to win?

Alyss had gone pale. William appeared poised to vomit. From their perspectives, it must have looked like the whole battle transpired in the blink of an eye. I heard a second wave of cries ring out as Vselin’s head struck ground, and his body followed swiftly after.

The Sword Titan paused for a moment, its body jerking awkwardly whilst its head panned in a rather mechanical manner from left to right, sweeping slowly across the whole city with its gaze.

Then it stopped, snapped its feet together smartly, ever-so-slightly inclined its head in our general direction, and vanished in an ear-shattering clap of noise.

“That’s…it, then?” Alyss murmured slowly, hesitantly, her face still drained of color.

William nodded, looking sickly.

“But, but it just…left,” she argued. “Does that happen often?”

The Prince of the Elgin Palace shook his head, but I couldn’t tell whether he meant it in the negative, or was simply at a loss for words. I took one last look at the staging grounds before turning away.

From afar, I saw the albino giant turn around, walking back into the sea of tents.

His entourage seemed frozen in place.