Erhu strings and playful wind chimes greet me as I hobble out into the sunlight. Jolie closes the screen behind me, but I wait in the shadow of a small wooden awning, one hand gripping the doorpost while I catch my breath. A heavy cloth robe covers me in the village style. Long sleeves drape like curtains from my arms, woven from scratchy midnight-blue fabric. I left the chest unbound. The crimson belt hangs unused from a peg just inside.

My bandaged flesh drinks in a bright morning sun and its humid, sweating heat as I stand there. Before me, a garden of lazy, gurgling brooks curls between stands of tall bamboo over a forest floor of white pebbles. Songbirds chase cicadas through the greenery, alighting on small evergreen trees or rocky fixtures throughout my vision. It is a world of shocking vitality enclosed by ascetic simplicity. The terraces of a vast, rustic estate of thatched roofs, wooden framing, rice mats, and paper walls left open to the elements borders the garden. A place without the comforts or conveniences of the distant capital. The home of a king.

In the absence of modern weakness, natural power flourishes. The champion’s guiding touch is present in every carefully cultivated slice of this sprawling courtyard. Even without my JOY activated, I can feel the physicality of this place. Life and energy pours from it wherever I look. Small tanuki wrestle and dose in the sun. Lilies and orchids and bonsai grow freely under careful watch. Everything is in blooming. Pink petals of sweet apple trees sprinkle the stones underfoot like an eggshell carpet, billowing through the air in contrail spirals when a hot breeze kicks.

I take in a deep breath of it. Close my eyes and savor the sounds. I can only dream what this place would feel like were my classes online. In the capital, we’re taught to make our own ki, amplifying the life energy that already exists inside us. We train our hearts to stoke that spark and let it roar like a furnace. Seeing this place, I cannot even imagine how much differently the Champion wields his power compared to mine. In a place like this, I wouldn’t even have to make my heat work. I could draw ki like yarn from the swaying trees, the fluttering grasses, the overwhelming abundance of life energy saturating the air. Foster, rather than forge. The limits of my own strength wouldn’t even matter.

The thought takes root in my mind. Another misguided twang of the erhu and an aggravated curse banish it to rumination as they invite me onwards.

I hobble through the garden across small bridges and ponds of koi, stooping once to scratch a fat tanuki on its fuzzy belly before my creaking knees immediately make me regret the motion. Deep within the groves of bamboo, I find the small pebbles underfoot abutting against the blackwood boundaries of a massive, rectangular slab of marble. Polished to a perfect shine, the marble is etched with the markings of a traditional fighting square across its center line. More carvings from a handheld chisel trail along the marble’s edge in a long history of a brushstroke language I cannot read.

My rival sits in the exact center of the marble, robed in white and humble grey. A tall stringed instrument rests in his lap and is balanced carefully against one shoulder. Two ceremonial blades lay on the ground beside his legs. One short, one long. Both tools of war. Usually, his preferred weapon is a more elegant rapier. Things have changed.

Ajax’s willowy hands hold a bow that grinds back and forth against the erhu strings, rousing a dismal melody from the poor instrument. I watch him play it from the shadow of the groves. Bamboo sways when I lean against it for support. A supple breeze drifts through the clearing, stirring our hair to the east. Ajax’s in a loose, wide braid down his back; mine in its untamed mane of fire.

He sings softly, almost humming in the old language of the villages, accompanying the instrument with a voice to rival the strings themselves until a fit of coughing overcomes him. He slips a small kerchief from his sleeve pocket to stifle another noise. Red speckles dot the inside. The cloth is a familiar friend on his person these days, though I can’t remember when I first noticed he carried it.

When at last his coughing fades, the strings return, but his voice never does. He leans slowly from side to side, weaving the seconds-long notes of a song far too sorrowful for his age. I feel as if I am intruding on something I was never supposed to see. A private moment Ajax meant only for himself.

He calls to me as I turn to find my way back inside. “How did it sound?”

I pause with a hand wrapped around the bamboo for support. Glance back to find him watching me expectantly, one hand patting the marble at his side. Opposite the blades. Putting them on his left, a less valuable companion in the moment.

Begrudgingly, I step over the blackwood borders and descend to the polished stone. The marble is hot to the touch when my foot presses flat against it. My entire body aches as I lower into sitting beside him. His legs are curled painfully beneath his body in the traditional village way. I can’t even manage to cross mine. Something that brings a small smirk to his dour expression.

“Tetsuka Monogatari is a forbidden song, you know.” He says it quietly, like we’re guests in an operahouse. The garden our stage, its animals our performers. “It was penned by a Psi who wished to spin dreams into reality. It’s said everyone who listens to it hears something different, but to hear the entire song will drive you mad. No one is allowed to learn the entirety.”

“...it sounded like sorrow,” I eventually answer. A breeze steals over the marble, scattering leaves of red and silver across the plane. “Terrible, unknowable sorrow.”

Ajax nods and gently sets down the erhu. “Once, I thought it sounded adventurous. It was why I learned that piece in the first place. But these days…” An infant tanuki comes to nuzzle against his foot, unnoticed. He shakes his head. “…all I hear is falling leaves.”

I sit beside him at peace for the first time. Watch how the sun graces his honest face with rays of warmth. I realize again how hard it should be to dislike him. How much of a fool I was for ever thinking him my enemy. He’s been a friendly rival at times, but bitter in most. A challenge I could never overcome. I should have looked for a way around our disharmony instead of through it like I always do. How different these past two years might have been if we’d ever had a simple talk like this instead of swapping insults before beating each other senseless in front of a crowd.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

Injuries shared truly do bind the uncommon together.

“I didn’t know you played an instrument,” I manage, stretching my legs with a grunt.

“I expect there are many things you don’t know about me.” Long strands of golden hair are swept behind his ears. He straightens his robe and slowly takes the smaller of his two blades into his lap. Fingers curling around the pearl sheathe. A prayer bead dangles from the hilt. My instincts flare as his hands jerk fractionally, exposing a sliver of steel to the sunlight.

“Far from the capital, near to this place, there is a cliff by the sea that I visited every summer on my own,” Ajax says to the sky. “It was there that I learned to duel. Day after day I trained against the Lungracian evergreens, taking the silver from their veins as my reward. I fought every summer until none remained. And on the noon I struck down the last, a wandering soul found me amidst the stumps without teachers, enemies, or shelter from the sun. He showed me how to plant the trees anew so that I might fight them again the next summer.” He pauses, blade slithering into the shape of a trowel. Another quirk of elemental control restores it to its pristine form, replaced to the atom. “These days… I wish he had shown me to see the world as more than a forest.”

We stare together at the distant garden wall, robed in dark and light. Both casting the same drifting shadows. Above the wall, the cypressian trunks of five Lungracian trees bend easily in the grip of a seaside wind. Salt tangs the air.

I lean back on my hands, saying nothing. Ajax holds the blade out to me. Hilt first, moving faintly in the air. The arms that hold it are thinner than I remember.

“I have done my part in stoking our war,” he says, still not looking over. “I am certain it must sound silly to hear me say I regret most of it. I always hated your showboating, but that should never have been an excuse to make an enemy of you at school. No matter how many times I humiliated you in front of our peers, in front of the cameras, you always stood up. You always came back.” His other hand tightens into a quiet fist. “You have your tides, just like I do. And even though it was sheer circumstance that forced us together, I wish I had planted a tree between us instead of cutting one down.”

My hand waits a careful separation from taking the proffered blade. “It’s not too late. The second-best time is today.”

“So it is,” Ajax murmurs. “The seasons change. We’re involved in something dangerous now. Something more than schoolyard brawls. You said in the skyscraper that there was much we could learn from each other, and I think we might have need of it now. But more than that…” he pauses, then drops the blade into my hand unprompted. Its pearl sheathe is incredibly heavy. He shrugs, scarily sober, and lets out a single forlorn breath through his nose, lowering his gaze to the petals scattering across the marble. “I have spent my entire life making an axe of myself and stumps of others, Mars. And lately, I have grown tired of making more.”

I heft the sheathe and turn it over, letting the sunrays play across its golden etchings. “Wars aren’t fought by one, Ajax. I’ve contributed to my fair share of the assholery between us. Wasn’t often proud of it, either.” I gently pass the blade back and follow where his attention drifts. “It was easy to distill everything I fight against in you. You’re better than me. Better than everyone, to an aggravating degree. Yet you were so cold and distant and proud. You looked at the rest of us like we weren’t worth your time. I could never make myself like you, because you were nothing like what I thought the best should be.” I let out a matching breath and look up to the sun-stroked clouds. “From the first day, I never gave you a chance. For four years you were just a test I couldn’t pass.”

He nods. “Then where does that leave us?”

“Starting over, hopefully,” I say. “Because I’d rather make friends than enemies, too.”

“Believe me, the entire Section has noticed.”

I stick a taped-up hand across the small distance between us, palm open to shake. “Mars Mons. Everyone calls me Mars. I love my sister, and I want to be the champion someday.”

Ajax raises his eyebrows, hand an inch from clasping mine. Our eyes meet for a long moment. Then his lips quirk upward in amusement. “Icebreakers? Really?”

I roll my eyes. “Jolie wrote it to help me introduce myself around campus. It stuck.”

A sliver of amusement parts his mouth in a flash of white. He tentatively clasps my forearm in the fighting way. “Icebreakers, then.” He shakes once, mustering a bemused smile. “Ajax Lionhart, from the villages. I too want to be the champion someday.”

I scare the songbirds with a loud laugh. “Look at that. We have something in common already.”

Groaning, no doubt already regretting his overture, Ajax stands like a white-robed willow in a fading breeze and helps me to my feet. Our weight differential almost sends him sprawling across the marble before he catches himself. His face twitches at every pop and cracking joint that echoes across my body.

“How badly did Prazen beat you, man?”

I grunt and pop something else in my lower back. “Pre-tty bad. You?”

Ajax shakes his head. “I knew there were freelance fighters on par with the leagues, but I never thought one would work as a corporate mercenary. After fighting him, I know Prazen did not deserve his minor league rank. I would put him in the majors outright. A contender for Pira or Etelos’ rank.”

“He was certainly something.” I pop my knuckles one at a time, starting with the thumb. “And I don’t say that lightly. You know how much I hate giving up. Fighting him felt like fighting a brick wall.”

“One that was more than a match for the both of us.”

“Just goes to show how much we need to improve to jump from university to the leagues.”

Ajax wilts for a moment before mustering himself again. “Yes. This fight isn’t over, not by a long shot. We’ve only scratched the surface of what Vex Shimano was doing with Bishop and those computational machines. Not to mention his involvement with Prazen and whatever designs they have on the professional leagues.”

I grunt as I stretch languidly in the sun, winding my arms in loose circles. “The Champion, too. Jolie said the media is running him through a grinder. Trying to destabilize his rule and turn public opinion.”

“Yes, there is that. There’s too many damn things we stumbled into.” He lets out a very out-of-character curse and magnetizes the twinned swords back to his hand. An invisible skill not unlike telekinetics; only exclusively controlling metal. “The champion will return tonight. We should wait to speak more of this until then. Let’s find the girls, if we can. It would be good to present a united front.”

Ajax glances to the Lungracian trees one last time as we make our exit from the fighting square.

“To say he was unhappy to see us in that skyscraper would be a massive understatement.”