“Then get in here. I’ll call your fight.” Arvay jogged over to the edge of the stadium, clapping Hugil a high-five as they passed.
“Do you need a little break?” Hugil asked as he got closer, pulling a pair of gloves out of a pack he kept on his back. He slipped them on and Elach saw that they were made of tightly knit glass scales over some kind of leather. So that was why he’d used the fist analogy.
Elach tested his arms and legs, seeing if anything had cramped up or hurt in any other way. When a bend forwards and backwards only left him feeling a tiny bit dizzy, Elach was sure he was fine.
“I’m good to go.” He said, starting to walk back to his side.
“Uh, can I get that side?” Hugil asked sheepishly. “I like it better.”
Elach raised an eyebrow and turned around. “Why do you like it more?”
“Because I win more on that side.” Hugil said shamelessly.
“Then I think I’ll stay here.” Elach laughed. “I need all the help I can get, don’t you think?”
“Fair enough.” Hugil reluctantly agreed. “But once you’re strong enough to give us a challenge, I always get that side. Deal?”
“I’ll think about it.” Elach said, finding his place and turning to face Hugil. He didn’t expect to stick around here long enough to give Hugil a good challenge, but he didn’t need to know that.
“Whenever you’re good.” Hugil called out, touching his right gloved hand to the ground.
Elach had no idea what Hugil could do, save for breaking into his headspace. He assumed it had something to do with the gloves, but they could also be for amplifying his techniques and not for punching. They did look like they were made of glass, after all.
“You’ve got thirty seconds before you’re disqualified.” Arvay informed Elach, and he nodded to make sure she knew he heard her.
He had thirty seconds, and he was going to use them. Hugil’s Issi didn’t swirl around him, like Arvay’s had, rather it condensed around his hands in two jagged globs that Issi chipped off of like the were constantly being struck by picks. Smaller lines of Issi ran over the rest of his body, feeding into the jagged globs, but felt more stable than them. Like anchoring pegs and ropes for a tent.
Elach knew from experience that Hugil’s Issi had something to do with breaking and or entering, which most likely meant he would have to get up and close with Elach. He was a little more confident in his close range fighting, but he still had no offensive or even defensive techniques to work with. And since Arvay had suggested he find someone to teach him how to fight, the Glasrime apprentices had probably all had training of their own. Raw strength and experience from fighting off Issi beasts wouldn’t cut it. And looking at Hugil’s muscular form, Elach scratched raw strength off of his very short list of advantages.
“Five seconds.” Arvay called.
Elach dropped to the ground, making an anchor as far behind him as he was comfortable with and placed his palm down flat. He wasn’t ready at all, and Hugil had a huge advantage over him in experience, knowledge, and Issi. He was going to get trounced, so he took in a deep breath and steadied himself for the upcoming beating. He hoped Hugil would take it as easy on him as Arvay had.
“Fight!” Arvay yelled, and Hugil charged.
Hugil was nowhere near fast enough that Elach couldn’t dodge, but he wanted the lumbering man to be in the middle of an attack when he pulled himself away. So he slowly backpedaled with his arm grasping in the opposite direction of his anchor, watching Hugil push off the ground with anticipation, white-scarred arms outstretched as if to trap Elach in a hug. Large gauntleted fingers left white trails as the practitioner approached, forcing Elach to pull himself off at an odd angle, arms closing around where he'd been moments ago as white trails created a cage in the air. Hugil walked straight through the trails as Issi chipped off of him, rushing recklessly once more without a second of pause.
Their dance continued for almost two minutes, Elach pulling himself away from all of Hugil’s attacks that left long trails of white after them like solid smoke. Elach had yet to touch one, but from the way that Hugil’s Issi lines flared whenever he touched one, Elach figured that they would be slightly more harmful to him. Hugil attacked again, running a long outside path to get to Elach, and he pulled himself away once more. But this time, when he landed, he found that he’d been corralled. There were white trails all around him, the older ones losing some of their luster, but still solid enough that he wasn’t risking running through them.
He reached out with a probing finger to touch one of them, finding it smooth and exactly the same temperature as the air around it. He traced it over to the side and pulled it away in surprise, a small cut on his fingertip letting him know that pulling through one of the lines would be a death sentence.
Hugil seemed to recognize that Elach was trapped as well, holding his gauntlets out in front of him and making a kneading motion with empty air. The empty air slowly turned white, a mass of the same stuff the trails had been made of coming into existence in between Hugil’s hands. Elach wasn’t stupid enough to let Hugil fire that thing at him, and he knew he would just get cut up if he tried to go in, but he didn’t want to lose this without trying anything.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Setting his anchor right behind Hugil, Elach pulled himself directly into the practitioner. The field zipped by as the trails Hugil left blurred behind Elach, and he twisted into a kick during the pull. It was aimed for Hugil’s exposed flank, and much to Elach’s surprise, it landed.
Hitting Hugil was like kicking a brick wall, except Elach had somehow managed to chip away a mass of brick with his blow. Chips of Issi stung at his eyes as Hugil’s supporting lines faltered for a moment, but within three heartbeats, they were back and strong as ever. Hugil grunted and let his remaining technique falter, dropping one gauntleted hand to his side to trap Elach’s leg against his body. He’d caught him in almost the exact same way Arvay had. Hugil scratched long trails up Elach’s leg, and they burned like a horrible itch, but they didn’t really hurt.
Elach knew he was done for when Hugil reached a gauntlet out and tapped him on the nose, a gesture that could have very easily been followed by a punch that would have rearranged Elach’s face into an abstract piece of art. Or sliced him into lunchmeat.
“Well this is embarrassing.” Elach quipped, spreading his palms and letting his one anchor dissipate in surrender. “That’s the second time in fifteen minutes I fell for that bait.”
“Yeah, but I wasn’t baiting you in.” Hugil responded, snapping his fingers one by one on each hand. Parts of his trails disappeared with each snap, eventually leaving only two sets that cut through the air. “I saw you zipping around, but it’s completely different when you shoot straight at me like a bat outta one of the hells. Scared the tar outta me.” Hugil then touched the tips of his thumbs to each other, and then the air was clear.
“I’ll take that as a win.” Elach chuckled, ducking away from Hugil’s hold. He held a finger to his leg, and noted that his wounds weren’t bleeding. In fact, they were already healed. And his container felt emptier than he expected. “Anything at this point is.”
“You got any more pointers for him?” Arvay asked as she stepped over the boundaries of the arena.
“I’d just repeat what you told him.” Hugil said. “But using your base Issi better is something I think I need to repeat. You can only do the zippy-thing, right?”
Elach nodded. “It’s a little bit more complex than that, but you’re right.”
“And you powered up with existential bleed, so you’ve gotta have travel or rending Issi. I’m gonna guess travel.” Hugil said. “I’m not really sure how that works, though. Mind explaining so we can give you some pointers?”
Elach thought about it for a moment. He didn’t really want everyone knowing exactly how his Issi worked, but he also didn’t plan on staying here for very long. He also had barely any idea how to work his own Issi.
“I make little anchors,” Elach said, creating an anchor in the palm of his upturned hand. “Then I can pull myself to them or push myself away from them.”
Hugil and Arvay looked like they were waiting for more. “And...?” Arvay trailed off, spinning her wrist in a circle for Elach to say more.
“And that’s it.” Elach shrugged, dispelling his anchor when he remembered Arvay and Hugil couldn’t see it anyways. “As far as I know, that’s all my Issi can do.”
“Huh. Seems… weak? Maybe underwhelming’s a better word, though.” Hugil said, furrowing his brow. “What’s it like when you pull yourself to something?”
“It’s like I’m standing still while the world moves underneath me. I don’t stumble, unless there’s a root or something, and my momentum doesn’t change.” Elach explained.
“So not like speed or travel Issi.” Arvay nodded. “Hmm. You got anything, Hugil?”
“Can you push or pull things other than yourself?” Hugil suggested. “Or are you the only thing you can link to your anchors?”
“I don’t really know how my Issi works. Haven’t exactly had time to experiment with it.” Elach admitted. “How do you make your storm into lances, Arvay?”
“It’s like… taking a handful of wet sand from the beach that is my Issi and shaping it into something else. If I break the sand apart in my hands, it becomes the storm. If I shape it into something, I can throw it. And if I press it to my skin, it becomes an insulating layer of storm.” Arvay explained. “If you don’t know what your Issi feels like, and get a good feeling on how you can bend it, you won’t be able to do anything.”
Elach rubbed at his calf where Arvay had frozen it . “Was that layer of frost I kicked your base Issi?” Elach asked.
Arvay shook her head. “That was one of my focuses. It adds a layer of frost to the outside of my storm, making the insulation actually useful, and I can spread it to anything that touches it.”
“Is it supposed to break?” Elach asked.
“Yep. It absorbs most of the impact and shatters, then freezes whatever hit me.” Arvay said, miming an explosion with her hands. “Kaboom, then you’re frozen solid right next to me. You got a good look at it firsthand.”
“And the ice that appeared out of thin air?”
“Another focus. But I’m not going to explain that one to you. Gotta keep a few advantages close to my chest, you know?” Arvay winked. “Never know when we’ll have to fight for real.”
“So yeah.” Hugil clapped his hands, then put an arm over Elach’s shoulder. “It’s mostly about trying everything you can with your Issi and seeing what sticks. A focus uses your Issi to power itself, so it still has to be related to your Issi, but it can be pretty dang different. Those trails I used against you? They were made using one of my focuses to fill in the gouges I left with my base carving Issi.”
“So what if, just as an example, someone didn’t have Issi in their headspace to experiment with?” Elach said. “How would this theoretical person get their Issi from their container into their headspace to fool around with?”
“Time.” Arvay and Hugil said in unison.
“It takes at least a week for your bond to stabilize, a month for the seed to fully change your headspace, and then another month or two to connect your container to get Issi you can toy around with.” Hugil explained. “Which means you’ve been bonded for less than two months if you don’t have any Issi in your headspace.”
“Damn.” Arvay whistled, looking at Elach with newfound… something. It could have been appreciation, but it was a little too calculating for that. “That true, Elach?”