Vayra deflected a sword to the side, then stepped to the side to avoid a lunge. Her foot slipped, and she stumbled back towards the edge of a cliff. Ten feet from the edge. Then nine. She caught herself, planting her prosthetic leg down in the grassy plateau. The grass, however, was wet. Her leg slipped, and she fell flat on her stomach.
Kallo VI. A rural planet a few days’ sail from Thronehome, covered almost exclusively in green fields, steep cliffs, and waterfalls. The skies were filled with an orange gas giant, and that was about all there was to it. Certainly no one around to see her.
The silver sword swished down towards her head. She rolled to the side, then pushed herself up with both arms. Her mechanical arm required a surge of Arcara. She pushed the magic energy through in an uncontrolled burst, and the starsteel wires uncoiled. The arm extended, pushing her up and rolling her over to the side far faster than she had intended. A burst of blue sparks spewed out of the gaps in between the wood panels. Where the starsteel wires joined with the stump of her bicep, heat seared her skin.
The sword came down towards her head again, but she raised her flesh-and-blood arm and her bracer, again deflecting the blade off to the side.
Swinging her legs, she tried to pull herself back to her feet, but her mechanical leg didn’t respond to the surges of Arcara like she anticipated. She had to guide each filament individually, and sometimes, the Arcara didn’t work.
‘Roll again!’ Phasoné commanded. ‘To your left. Go, now!’
Vayra obeyed her bound Goddess’ command, but instead of rolling, she simply pushed with her flesh arm, shifting her upper body just to the left.
The sword stopped before it would have hit her, but she struck the blade with the back of her bracer anyway, pushing it all the way into the dirt.
With her opponent’s blade trapped, she kipped up to her feet properly and spun around. “You don’t have to worry about hitting me,” she hissed.
In response, her opponent lunged, thrusting the blade at her gut. She dove back the other direction, snatching up a wooden scythe from the ground—where she’d dropped it a few minutes ago.
Her hands ran down the smooth wood haft, finding their place. Even though it was a real, physically-manifested scythe, she still gave Phasoné control of her right hand. It was her mechanical hand, but that didn’t seem to matter to Phasoné. The Goddess had infinitely better Arcara control than Vayra herself did.
Phasoné didn’t conjure a scythe, but she still swung like she was using it—like they were working together to use Phasoné’s weapon. That was how they had learned to use the weapon, after all.
‘Now, let’s take him,’ Phasoné said.
“I’m on it,” she whispered to the Goddess. “Less talk, more swing.”
Without a word, her opponent, Glade pounced back into action, unleashing a flurry-pattern of sword swipes. His blade swished through the air like a feather, and the way he spun it made it look like it was as light as one, too.
She parried each swipe with the haft of the training scythe, knocking the silver sword to the side or down towards the ground.
With Phasoné in control of her prosthetic arm, Vayra could match Glade for speed. She caught each of his swings before it got anywhere near her. She never blocked head-on, or he’d cut right through the scythe’s haft.
But he wasn’t using any Arcara or mana. Vayra had been spending it all afternoon to lend Phasoné an arm or unleash Starlight Palms—and to cycle Arcara to her prosthetic leg and arm as she needed it.
She might have had a well of mana magnitudes bigger than Glade did, but he wasn’t using any.
That just meant she had to win sooner than later. She hoisted the scythe up, and the next time he swung, she and Phasoné wrapped the scythe’s plain head around the tip of Glade’s sword. They pulled to the side, wrenching his sword in the same direction. With his upper body exposed, she lashed out and struck him in the chest with the haft of the scythe.
He stumbled back, but turned his momentum into a spin and brought the tip of his sword back up. Vayra had better reach, though, and she’d given herself distance to use it. She shifted her grip lower on the scythe, keeping the blade aimed at Glade the whole time. He stepped back again.
“No holding back,” Vayra reminded him. “Short of cutting my head off, I’ll heal.”
“Watch your throat, too,” he said, locking eyes with her.
Then he darted to the side, raising his sword for an overhead swipe. Vayra tried to match his footwork and circle in the opposite direction, but her mechanical leg wasn’t as fast as she needed it to be. It tangled with her real leg, and she tripped.
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Glade didn’t stop. Good.
She drew starlight out of the scarf Phasoné had given her. Even if the climate of Kallo VI was well above temperate, Vayra needed the scarf to fuel her magical techniques.
As soon as Glade’s sword swished down towards her, she fired a Starlight Palm upwards, creating a blast of energy and force that pushed his blade back in the opposite direction.
“Phasoné?” Vayra asked. “How’s our mana doing?” It couldn’t have been very high, because her mouth was parched, and specks were whirling in front of her vision.
‘You have a little sliver of your total capacity left. Not even a sixteenth left, and quickly depleting.’
Enough to use a Brace technique. While Glade stumbled back, Vayra strengthened her left arm with starlight-infused Arcara. She jumped back to her feet and grabbed the edge of his sword.
The Brace technique made her arm glow, almost like Phasoné had taken it over, except the light stayed inside her flesh. Her enhanced grip was enough to stop his sword in its tracks. He tried to pull away, but she didn’t let the weapon slide.
Then the Bracing faded. With a sputter, the white glow left her arm, and Phasoné’s presence evaporated, rescinding control of the prosthetic arm as well. Her mana had been sucked dry.
No mana meant no Arcara control. No Arcara control meant her mechanical limbs were as good as sticks.
But her prosthetics were hard, and they didn’t hurt when she hit things with them. She directed her stump of an arm at Glade, dragging the prosthetic along with it, and struck him in the shoulder, sending him skittering a few steps to the side.
He took the sword with him. It slid out of Vayra’s hand, slicing a thin line down her palm. She hissed in shock, but she should have expected that.
He brought his blade all the way up, then set it against her neck.
But she hadn’t been doing nothing, either. By the time he had his sword up, she had raised the training scythe with her real hand, holding the tip up to his neck.
“Careful,” Glade intoned.
“I wasn’t that close to hitting you, was I?” Vayra asked. The edges of her vision were starting to blur—which she blamed on dehydration—and a headache split the front of her mind in two, like someone had driven a wedge into her forehead.
“The cliff, Vayra,” Glade said.
She leaned away from his sword, then looked down. They were only a step away from the edge of the cliff.
“Ah, yes…” She cleared her throat, but it didn’t stop her cheeks from reddening.
Glade raised his free hand, then lifted his sword away from her neck. “Shall we call it a tie?”
“I’m good with that, yeah.” She pulled her scythe away, then took a few quick steps away from the edge of the cliff. Admittedly, she would have preferred a resounding victory over him. But she didn’t say that out loud.
“I am sorry about your hand,” he said.
“That’s just part of sparring with real weapons,” she said, wiping her hand on her short breeches. With how hard Nathariel was pushing them both, they had ended every day for the past two months drenched in sweat—even if she only wore shorts and a chest wrap. “It’ll heal soon enough.”
Glade patted his shorts as well, panting. He only wore a thin sash across his chest to hold up his scabbard. “I must apologize, still—my oath strictly forbids harming—”
“I take it you two are done, then?”
Vayra and Glade both spun to face away from the cliffs. Nathariel trotted closer to them on the back of a horse. He wore a formal green coat and a tricorn hat, and carried his spear in the saddle like it was a musket.
“Glade, you are relying too much on your sword,” Nathariel stated. “You are skilled, yes, but that alone will not carry you. If you had used your Silverbrand Edge, you would have cut through Vayra’s Starlight Palm. You are practically a sword God-heir, now. Under my watch, I will need you to treat yourself like one. You have a technique or two, so use them.”
The Silverbrand Edge, as Vayra had learned, was what they were calling the basic sword technique Glade knew—which, according to Captain Pels and the crew of the Harmony, was what he had deployed against the bounty hunter a month ago on Muspellar. It created a filament of sword-aspect Arcara along the edge of the blade, sharp enough to help him cut through most objects and other magical techniques.
“And Vayra,” Nathariel said, “you are too reliant on your magic, to the point that you’re losing focus of your surroundings. Your Brace techniques won’t do you any good if you don’t have the skill to deploy their strength. You should have crushed Glade, but you didn’t.”
She wanted to say that she only lost because she had run out of mana, but that wasn’t a good excuse, and she knew it. Besides, Glade still had a nearly fifty-fifty win rate in their sparring matches—even when she hadn’t run out of mana.
“Your weak control of the prosthetic limbs proves as well that your Arcara control is not yet where it needs to be,” he added. “We’ll keep working at it, but that can come tomorrow. For the rest of the day, we’ll rest and recover.” He plucked a waterskin off the side of his saddle and tossed it to her. “Come along, now.”
He clicked his tongue, turning his horse away.
But, just as he turned around, ready to ride back along the plateau to the little village where they were resting, he stopped. After a few seconds of squinting, Vayra spotted a distant rider trotting along the plateau towards them.
“Order of Balance,” Nathariel said. After a half-minute, Vayra finally saw the woman’s black coat and white hair.
At least it wasn’t anyone looking to cause problems. She had to admit, the peace of Kallo VI was a welcome change.
“Apologies for the short notice!” the woman called. Judging by the rank stripes on her coat’s lapel, she was an Order Adept.
“What is it?” Nathariel asked gruffly. It didn’t sound like he was putting any effort into his words, but his voice boomed across the plateau like a cannon.
“Apologies, but your presences have been requested for an urgent meeting in Riverleech. Something important is happening at the fort, and Elder Gheita is there.”
Vayra groaned. Her thoughts had jinxed the peace.