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Chapter 26 - Sparring

> The strangest thing... has been coming to know the frailties of memory.

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> A favorite memory, oft revisited, was dissimilar from the Catalogue's exact reproduction, when I decided to relive it exactly on a whim.

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> That impulse inspired other tests of the processes of memory, motivated by the realization that I may have a unique opportunity to delve its mechanisms.

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> What I found disturbed me.

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> First, memories frequently recalled are most prone to change in small ways, while retaining an overwhelming sense of familiarity. Such that the representations of the unfailing Catalogue feel unnatural and strange.

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> Second, memories that are left untouched for extended periods, while detail is lost, err less in their specifics.

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> Third, the existence of events for which I have no recollection of whatsoever.

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> Events I was made to forget.

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> The Unwritten Journal of Calre

Calre sat with Vasala, contently watching as Jack picked himself up off the ground for the umpteenth time. The day’s travel had been cut short by Grant to begin training their new companion.

He and Vasala had been keeping their distance from the boy—though Calre privately recognized that thinking of him as such felt uncomfortable, he was not only nearly Calre’s age, but also several years older than Vasala.

“He’s getting better,” Calre stated, and it was true, though not necessarily obvious as Vasala shortly showed.

“Quite. By this time next year he might even survive a full minute against Grant, assuming an initial grace period of fifty-some seconds,” Vasala added.

Calre resisted the urge to roll his eyes, she had such a habit of digging at perceived weaknesses, even if her attacks made little sense. She’d only yesterday been advocating caution against him.

“And he seemed such a dangerous fellow. Alas, we should take note and maintain the polish of our own martial skills, they evidently rust at the slightest interval.”

Vasala flushed and made no reply, clearly she had thought he was employing a dry wit to belittle Jack’s effort and tried to join his banter, only to be cut down.

‘Have I upset you? Perhaps a peek at your unguarded look. Faster,’ Calre activated his core card. He found Vasala unpredictable at times, a condition he found stimulating, even if her efforts to impress him occasionally edged into annoyance.

Grant and Jack continued their sparring, short bouts of mingled spear and staff fighting techniques that inevitably concluded in Jack sprawling on the ground. Calre felt the flow of his perceptions accelerate as his card worked, the movements of the two combatants growing sluggish in his eyes.

What Vasala had missed, which Calre generously attributed to inattention rather than ignorance, was that Grant had been steadily increasing the skill he brought to bear against Jack, to keep him in a steady condition of desperate striving.

It was an arduous method, meant to push to a plateau of functional skill as quickly as possible in the few days they had. Calre watched as Jack managed to innovate around the same trip that had caught him earlier, tucking into a roll through the stumble and thrusting at Grant’s back from behind.

Grant sidestepped, trod once Jack’s foot, hip-checked the spear out of his grip, and kicked a bit of dust over Jack’s supine form for good measure, all without looking back. Jack, apparently at his limit, remained down.

Calre laughed, he had been on the receiving end of similar tutelage, and knew well the frustration it manifested. Grant’s not-so-subtle incitement was a calculated motivator, but in this case didn’t manage to rouse the boy gasping for air on the ground.

He was approaching the limit of Faster’s potency, soon he would revert to baseline perception. But for these last ten seconds he moved and thought at four times the rate of the world, and he was curious to know what Vasala’s expression was in response to his laughter.

Right Place. Another card played. It had been a strange addition to his primary carding, an effect that allowed him to teleport his limbs and head into any orientation, so long as the new position was normally viable. The martial and movement utility was obvious, particularly in concert with his other cards, but he’d found some niche uses for covert observation.

Instantly, he shifted his head’s orientation to face Vasala, and then returned it to the original angle just as quickly. She had seen the flicker. He wasn’t quite fast enough to elude the instant perceptions of the eye, but he’d learned how to manipulate them. Turning his head conventionally, letting normal motion convince her that the briefest flash of his face had been part of regular movement. Pose an innocuous question to distract… and done. He’d yet to encounter anyone who could see through his technique, he suspected that he was running against hard limits in human cognition, vulnerabilities that could not be transcended without other cards to enhance human senses.

The next act in his play of subterfuge was facilitated by activating the card Discuss. His mind split in two, running along parallel tracks. He designated the himselves Cal and Re. As he had long practised, Re immediately engaged with the world, facing outward and continuing the banter with Vasala, while Cal turned inward to focus.

Then the capstone to his intrigue, the card that brought him joy and frustration in equal measure. What he considered his greatest strength, the card that held his library, but grew more cumbersome with every passing day: Catalogue. The memory was easy to find, the fractional moment of Vasala’s face when he had laughed, and she thought herself unobserved. Some nobles guarded their expressions continually, but she was not so adept at the game as that. Cal used the three and a half times normal perception this part of him retained to slowly replay her face again and again.

Frustration, worry, some lingering embarrassment from his earlier sarcasm, resurrected when he reminded her of her misjudgment of his earlier intent.

A bit too much in negative emotions, she was honestly so sensitive to his criticism, no matter how mild. Though that was part of what made her pleasant company, the game hadn’t completely numbed her. Regardless, some flattery was due.

He cancelled his card effects and returned to being just Calre.

“Say Vas...,” he spoke to her in a conspiratorial whisper. She perked up minutely at his use of her personal name.

“Yes Cal?” she whispered back with a grin.

“What do you say we do a little showcase? I could stretch my legs after the ride, keep ourselves sharp lest we be outpaced by the accountant's son,” he kept his tone light and charming.

‘There, let her think my earlier remark was simply a misunderstood entreaty to spar.’

Vasala angled her head to highlight her good side—hardly a difference, but he’d noted she was self-conscious towards a subtle scar on the opposite cheek—and side-eyed him with a calculated coyness.

“Well if it’s for the education of a commoner, it would be remiss of me to refuse. After all, we Ala’s are known for our beneficence.”

With Vasala’s assent, Calre offered his arm and they approached the other pair.

Ever perceptive Grant immediately knew their intent, and gathered up the fatigued Jack to clear the way for their spar.

They arranged themselves four meters apart, far enough that neither of them could land an instantaneous blow.

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“Handicap? Terms?” Calre inquired.

“Three cards to one. Pulled blows. Deadly strikes are a point; three injuries are a point; and you may only attack with your feet,” Vasala rattled off her terms quickly.

Calre signalled acceptance.

‘A significant edge to her, but that’s only fair. What to use... Faster or Right Place? Well if we’re leaning towards spectacle...’

Right Place. He held the card ready, waiting for Vasala to initiate—her privilege as the junior.

The moment stretched.

Without warning Vasala launched herself, pushing off the ground with astounding speed. Each of her steps left a residue of frost—a byproduct of her card’s effect—stealing heat to drive her forward. Thermal conversion to kinetics was a strong card already, a category of strength enhancement that could synergize with other cards, but the leeching effect effectively doubled the threat the card presented. She could land blows of devastating power, but if even those were withstood, any touch from her could be deadly as she drew heat away when she reversed course, freezing blood in moments.

Calre watched her approach carefully, settling into a slight crouch. The longer he delayed his own card, the greater his eventual advantage. Their spars until now had pushed her to maximize the power she could bring to bear against his precision in the hopes of overwhelming him.

‘But have you learned temperance?’

An instant before Vasala arrived he activated his card. As she lunged into her first strike he flicker-stepped to the side, teleporting his limbs into the ideal position for a sudden kick-off from the ground.

Vasala decelerated instantly and lunged again into the direction of his telegraphed escape. A wash of warm air billowed out, the energy of her momentum converted into a thermal effect, and with it the second of her cards was shown.

‘Good. You’ve been learning the value of control. Will it be enough?’

His limbs reoriented again to the opposite direction, and he pushed off away from her lunge.

The greatest strength of Right Place was its unpredictability.

Every read she intuited from him could be reversed, every committed blow could become a feint. Her familiarity with physical sparring made him a poor match-up, as he broke every rule and made her experience work against her.

“Vas, dear, I have a question for you.”

Vasala grimaced and pivoted for another attack.

“Have you ever wanted to know what a man running on one leg looks like? No? Well, it’s a bit like this.”

He’d figured it out through experimentation. First by attempting to teleport legs forward to minimize the time spent bringing his legs forward and maximizing time pushing off with full force; he’d discovered a useful increase in overall speed, but in the course of his experiment he’d realized: why even bother with both legs? If the ‘downtime’ of a leg could be eliminated, it could function as well as two.

And so he ran with one leg, moving his body forward, until at the end of its extension he teleported it back to the front again. Not that his other leg sat useless. While one worked to move him, the other... kicked. Lashing out at Vasala in repeated strikes, never needing to draw back from a blow, always rushing in, a constant series of attacks from every viable angle.

He gained an injury point on her in short order, moving around too unpredictably for her to follow until one of her blocks was too slow and he restrained his kick to gently tap her stomach.

A brief acknowledgement from her before they returned to the same condition. Vasala now working to evade his assault, unable to find a counter to his manoeuvring, she tried to at least prevent him from flanking her at a continuous sprint.

But without his other cards to support the frenetic pace of his attacks, his advantage lapsed when he slipped on a patch of frosty grass he’d failed to notice. His recovery was almost instantaneous but Vasala’s speed and natural reactions gave her the edge, and a simple touch to his chest—the only part of him that couldn’t shift away from her hand, was enough to give her the first full point.

But he felt no frustration at the loss. She’d just done something clever.

“Did you spread your ice around intentionally for me to slip on?”

Vasala smiled enigmatically. “I may have considered the possibility.”

‘There. Now isn’t this much more fun than pouting? But how is our audience receiving it?’

Calre looked to see Grant explaining the details of the fight to Jack, who centred an attentive gaze on the man.

“...they’ve worked out the terms from earlier spars. Calre had a bit of a winning streak, hence the handicap. Next time, he’ll have the right to remove a constraint.”

“It makes sense, I suppose. Available cards will change with circumstance, each of them gets pushed to their limit... I’m beginning to understand the training philosophies you utilize...,” Jack replied thoughtfully.

‘With a setup like that, how could I resist?’

“Quite right! And yet from where I’ve been sitting, Grant hasn’t been pushing you to nearly your limit,” Calre inserted himself happily into their conversation.

A glance was exchanged between Jack and Grant at his interruption.

‘Now when did those two get so close?’

“Come now, no need to be bashful. Your cards are presumably already known to us. There’s no sense in limiting yourself to the mundane out of some sense of propriety.”

‘I don’t really expect you to acquiesce, but how will you refuse? An appeal to exhaustion? A plaintive look to Grant?’

“...Alright, if his lordship permits it,” Jack replied.

‘Huh?’

Calre looked again at Jack, observing suddenly that something had changed in him.

‘He carries himself differently. Less... broken up. This might even be interesting.’

Calre didn’t let his musing delay his reply, “Splendid! Grant, naturally, will take the handicap. Defensive cards only, use your own judgment for limitations. A point awarded for any solid strike from Jack; let’s say two deadly strikes from Grant for the same.”

Both of them agreed to the suggested terms, and Jack began to remove the spearhead from its shaft.

“There’s no need lad,” Grant interrupted, “mundane strength can’t harm me.”

Jack looked nervously at the bondsman, “Even so, I don’t think I could push myself with it attached.”

Grant shrugged acceptance and shortly the two were facing off. Grant held a hand up, he was waiting for the correct card to appear, ever prudent.

Vasala joined Calre on the sidelines, resuming the coquettish demeanour she defaulted to when uncertain.

“Perhaps his lordship could clarify his aim?” Vasala inquired demurely.

‘What are you hoping to get out of this farce?’ Calre interpreted.

“Alas, you draw attention to my quixotic pursuit of that which cannot be sought, but instead must be stumbled upon for it to retain any exalted nature,” he paused meaningfully, “I want to be surprised.”

Grant lowered his hand and nodded to Jack, he had acquired whichever card he intended.

Calre activated Faster in anticipation, giving it time to ramp up to its full effect. Discuss split him into Cal and Re, and they focused their attentions onto Grant and Jack respectively.

Jack began to cautiously approach Grant, making a few probing stabs which were easily deflected.

Cal could see that Grant had no intention of leaving such a paltry effort unpunished. A final tentative thrust from Jack was knocked aside with force, and Grant moved inside the reach of the spear to close on the boy.

‘Tediou-’

The thought collapsed as Jack erupted into a whirlwind.

Immediately both of his split selves focused all their attention on him, but even with the time dilation he couldn’t keep up with the speed. He collapsed his viewpoint to one, hoping to eke out even a fraction more understanding.

Jack wielded the spear as an extension of himself, holding it in a rigid, inflexible grip that would normally allow for little-to-no subtlety of movement—had he not made his entire body a part of every blow.

He spun like a top, repeatedly whipping the shaft against Grant—who could only block and retreat, desperately back-pedaling out of range.

The angle and position alternated with every swing, twisting with impossible acrobatics that made any warding effort useless, Grant was struck four-five-six times in rapid succession until he managed to distance himself.

An instant later, Jack was bounding into the air, turning his whole body parallel to the earth and landing a thrust of impossible reach. Calre tensed, expecting the boy to fall, but instead he swung back to his feet, clipping Grant’s chin with the staff in the same motion.

With a gruesome click, Grant’s jaw slammed close and his head jerked back. He sat on the ground hard, clearly stunned.

It had taken only seconds.

“I’m... uh, that’s all I have,” Jack announced, standing awkwardly over Grant.

Grant opened his lips in a grin that was unfortunately gruesome as a small spill of blood flowed to his chin, “Well ‘un lab.”

Calre’s smile was so broad it almost hurt.