The rain seemed absent as Crow fought, magic and adrenaline killing any sensation the sky’s javelins might have sparked.

He left a vacuum behind him; body breaking droplets into a mist with every lurching motion, flesh screaming its protests against the effort. Stifled by fear and will. Crow fought like he’d never fought before, as if a guillotine hung over his neck.

There must have been one about to fall upon Rajah, too, for the boy matched his ferocity as if to prove it wanting. Slushed weapons moving in time with a battered form, magic compensating for enfeeblement. Thrusting them everywhere Crow tried to be just a moment before he got there.

It was only their composition that gave him a chance.

Rajah sent globules of his own weapons flying free with every swing, each impact against Crow breaking them apart like the sand never had. It was a small mercy measured against his power. But a mercy still.

Left, right, upwards and downwards. Crow attacked from every direction he could manage. Rajah blocked them all unerring, never surprised, never late. Always in control of the battle.

Crow’s failures lasted long enough for him to truly lose all hope entirely. Then he found the miracle he’d dared not even wish for.

The guarding mud broke open as Crow struck it, just as it had earlier, and he realised the material’s fragile state was no temporary thing. Rajah’s surroundings left his effectiveness fractioned just as Crow’s wounds had his own.

He made a fusilade of his fists, not relenting in his assault for an instant. Watched as globs of sludge fell at his feet, grinned when yet more were flung back into Rajah’s face. The Jyptian’s defence remained strong, strong enough to possibly deter him.

But the sight of weakness had lit a flame behind Crow’s body. The promise of victory was stronger than the fear of defeat.

Rajah must have realised it too, for his tactics changed like the winds. One moment the mud was swirling around him, the next it fell limp to the ground. Puppet strings cut, master exposed. The Jyptian was leaping for Crow before he could even think to exploit the opening.

A shoulder drove the wind from him, a sweeping leg stole his balance. In moments he fell with Rajah atop him, mud exploding beneath his back, rain hammering his face from above.

He felt the enemy twist for a lock, limbs snaking even as Crow writhed instinctively. He had cognizance enough to fight the move.

His fingers scrambled for purchase, then twisted as he found it. Rajah shifted enough for Crow to scramble free from beneath him, rolling further away and hurrying to stand as his enemy did. They rounded on each other in unison.

Crow was reminded in an instant of Rajah’s true terror, forced into a retreat as the boy lashed out with punches and kicks akin to a headsman’s axe. Raw potency made up for his tertiary focus on physical might, and it became clear that Crow would find no more advantage in a conflict of bodies than he had all those weeks earlier.

Blows raced the rain as they broke against his guard, each one sending him stumbling further back. Slick ground forcing him to fight a war on two fronts for his balance.

He called on every scrap of experience he could to throw against his enemy, attacking the boy with all the underhanded tricks or misdirective bluffs he’d come to learn over the years. Some worked. None worked well.

Skill was on Crow’s side, experience too. But Rajah had power, and he had speed. Nothing Crow did could tip the balance enough to account for that.

At such close range, even his Glimpses did little to help.

But still he saw his chance. A crack, however slight, in Rajah’s impenetrable mastery over their conflict. Too small for Crow to exploit, yet easily large enough that he could reach his enemy if he only had something to lever it.

A scream turned his will iron-hard, desperation feeding it like fuel to a fire. Suddenly Crow’s wounds didn’t sting so sharp, his body didn’t bear such weight.

He began parrying where he’d barely blocked, advancing near as quick as he’d retreated. Body moving faster than power alone would have allowed.

To his marvel and ecstatic relief, Rajah started ceding the ground he’d spent the rest of their battle stealing.

Crow tried and failed to break his enemy’s defence, throwing one attack after another to run off it like sparks from a whetstone. He took perhaps five heartbeats to realise his folly, hesitation.

With a cry born as much from madness as jubilation, he let his own guard vanish entirely. Seized every fibre of his being to make a weapon of it and redoubled his attack.

Rajah retreated more quickly, blocked quicker, and Crow found himself still failing to reach the Jyptian behind the wall. The deadlock lasted one terrible heartbeat before his foe gave.

Knuckles scraped a cheek, then whipped back like feet dangling from gallows. Rajah ignored the blow with an admirable ease, but the next caught him far more solidly.

He grunted as blood brust from nostrils, backstepping again, then jerking as Crow’s foot hooked an ankle out from under him. Turning the retreat to a stumble.

Crow didn’t miss his chance, lunging while Rajah’s balance still left him. Falling upon the boy with suicidal haste and delivering elbows to race the rain down while his enemy staggered away.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

Rajah cursed into the storm, driven downwards and backwards at once. He righted himself quickly, flailing in retaliation, but by then Crow was already dancing from reach.

The boy limped for a moment, seeming to favour the side that Amelia’s fist had sunken so terribly into. Crow banished all thought of the girl as he pounced, feinting for it before cracking an elbow against the Jyptian’s skull when he moved animalistically to defend the wound.

Another stumbling opportunity, and another assault. Then they parted again before Crow started closing once more.

He pressed his attack, realising that the enemy’s shield was not half so great as his spear and eager to keep the offensive from his control.

Weaving in the diagonal, Crow kept his eyes on the world around them as much as the battle. Looking for obstacles he could drive Rajah’s back towards, treacherous ground that might leave backstepping feet slipping outwards.

Rajah kept his footing only with great distraction, and his furtive glances to the hazards at his shadow each brought new opportunity to strike him.

Again and again did Crow’s arms ring out with the impact of fists against flesh, their joints screaming like they hadn’t since he first woke from fighting Balogun.

Legs, too, doing their work of gnawing at the ankles and knees of his enemy, hungry to strip away the mobility from his foe and leave him easier pickings.

Crow’s own body urged him to surrender with its agony, but he ignored the pain just as he had his own doubts.

The bottomless resilience his enemy displayed was enough of an obstacle regardless. His strikes seemed the flailings of a child to him, hurting where they might have wounded. Slowing where they ought have stopped. It was only volume that gave them any effect at all, and Crow felt an impossible certainty that he’d lose the moment that barrage of impacts halted.

So he fought on past burning muscle and weighted flesh, willing his body to move even as it seemed adorned with lead.

Head, jaw, gut and legs. Ribs, shoulders, even the chest for all it did. He struck wherever an opening emerged, limbs like swarming sharks.

Sharks that found their teeth broken against bone where they expected blubber. Rajah remained strong even through the assault, weathering it as the pain burned unmasked across his face.

Something glinted in his eyes before long, a danger Crow almost missed. Barely enough warning to let him hurl himself back from the blow that came instead of an expected block.

He struck twice as Rajah advanced, blood freezing as the blows rebound from his face.

Crow guarded one strike, leapt above another. Almost fell as his feet skid on the cowering ground where he landed, then cried out at the sensation of a boot meeting his chest.

The rain turned horizontal and the winds grew loud, gravity relinquishing Crow for heartbeats as he sailed through the air. Back to the ground, eyes meeting the weeping skies. Almost like floating along a river.

Reality caught his focus again as he landed, sliding half again so far as he’d been flung before finally stopping against a great mound of piled sludge, scraped up from the ground and left to fall upon him where he lay. He scrambled to his feet just as Rajah reached him at a sprint, blocking another kick and almost falling as he slid back again.

Pain and panic fought for his attention while Rajah stormed him. For once Crow found it hard to keep focused on his true enemy.

They fought like a dance for seconds before desperation robbed them of their grace, then descended to the like of rabid dogs wrestling for a rodent’s carcass.

Blows fell heavy and clumsily, dexterity thrown to the wind in favour of whatever fractional speed could be gleaned from doing so. Grunts accompanied each impact and miss, and it seemed that Rajah had no more interest in evading than Crow himself.

Bruises had begun to sprout already on his enemy, he could see that much even in the dim light of the lightning and smothered skies. Clearly, his foe was on the brink.

That placed him on even footing with Crow, as far as he could measure it. He let out another feral roar and felt his arm shocked as it thundered once more to its core. Almost without thought.

Victory was an unlikely prospect, he knew. His enemy was stronger, tougher, quicker. And closer in skill than he’d have hoped.

Crow found himself studying Rajah still, probing for weaknesses that might be exploited by his battered, thumb-handed form. Aiming to muster whatever measure of force his clumsy muscles could still manage.

He fought as he had before, with neither terror nor hope. Filled by nothing at all, and drawing an impossible strength from his emptiness as it seemed to eat the pain that festered within.

He was mechanical, mindless, fighting for no reason at all, other than to fight.

Somehow, in that moment of glorious, combative madness, even Galad vanished from thought.

***

Peace was not something Lavastro had imagined she’d find in any meeting with her fellow organisers, but it came to her all the same. She welcomed the balance it brought, like opium and caffeine taken at once.

All around numbers were being raised as the organisers’ attendants darted in and out of the room, carrying orders while figures were equalised and compromises made. They’d started work on the militia half an hour prior, and already she knew it would be hours more before the matter was done.

Still, there was a comfort in it. A solidarity that seemed to leave their defences readied already.

Lavastro moved the figures in her mind, balancing sums and allowing for pessimism to temper expectation. Felt a cautious hope arise as she realised thousands would likely answer the Crux’s call within the day. It was tainted, as all hope was by the touch of realism. Udrebam’s governess had ignored the Sieve’s call, sequestering herself away rather than summon the city guard to bolster their defensive measures. Another example of Unixian ineptitude to heighten the growing pile.

Others, though, defied expectation in different ways.

“I will make preparations to the Crux itself.” Lesifarz had said, standing as he spoke and heading for the door practically oozing his newfound solidity. “The security here should be warned as soon as possible, however much difference it might make.”

He’d disappeared before any could answer, before Lavastro could consider the risk that such action might alert their hidden enemy of what they knew. Still she let him go, finding greater concerns than such a danger and deciding that the preparation was worth it regardless.

She thought and thought, deadening the world as only Manamis ever had before. Sitting so still in her oceanic deliberations that her body began to seize at the joints.

Time’s passage inverted, hastening rather than slowing by the situation around her. Room finally, mercifully silent amid the intense considerations.

Lavastro allowed herself a break only after the second hour. Leaning back, groaning as her body popped and loosened, rolling her head and clearing her mind to gain however much rest from the mental fatigue she could in such a limited time.

It was the sudden freedom of her mind that gave her half a moment’s more warning than any other in the room when the far wall caved inwards and every corner was filled with an eye-scorching light.