I let out a cold breath. My blood ran along the blade of my dagger as mana shaped it into another. The weapon shimmered in my grasp: Crystalis. A snowy white sword, its surface gleaming faintly even in this dim underground light. No one else had ever wielded it. It belonged only to me.
Silas stood a few paces away, his greatsword held low in a guarded stance. He waited. Watching. "What should I do?" I thought. A head-on strike would be suicide. I needed another way.
I stepped forward and drove mana through my boot. Ice burst outward, crawling over the muddy ground and twisting through roots and stagnant puddles until half the swamp solidified into a frozen plain. The sound of cracking frost echoed faintly in the tunnels above.
Then it came to me. Underground. I muttered the word under my breath. Maybe I could use the ceiling to my advantage. Sweat ran down my forehead before I even moved. Silas hadn't budged. His posture was composed, steady, like he had no reason to fear me. And maybe he didn't.
A Blight offering a duel.
Unheard of.
He respected me. That was clear. If I charged head-on, maybe he wouldn't expect it.
I surged forward, an explosion of mana blasting from beneath my feet. Our swords met in the center of the frozen ground. The impact roared through the cavern. The shockwave rippled across the ice. From the corner of my eye, I saw Virgil standing far off in silence, watching us both.
"At least if I die," I thought, "it won't be the end of my contribution."
Silas' strength easily overpowered mine. His greatsword slammed upward, hurling Crystalis from my grasp and embedding it into the rocky ceiling above. I barely dodged the next swing, a heavy downward strike that shattered the ice where I'd been standing.
Blood. A thin stream of it flew toward me like a flash of light. I saw it just in time. I raised my hand to form a shield, but the attack was too fast. I had no choice. I let it pierce my palm, and as it did, I channeled ice straight into the wound. Frost spread down my fingers, devouring the blood until it crystallized and shattered apart. The pain burned, but the technique was neutralized.
My sword hitting the ceiling wasn't a mistake. That was part of the plan.
Crystalis pulsed. A deep crack split through the stone above. Then came the fall; massive icicles crashing down like spears. They tore through the air. One pierced Silas' arm before he could evade, smashing through his armor and leaving his flesh pale and exposed. He barely flinched.
With his uninjured arm, he raised his hand and fired an arrow made of his own blood. It streaked upward, colliding with the descending ice and shattering the spears into a thousand red-tinged fragments.
The frozen air hummed with tension. Steam hissed from the splinters melting against the swamp's warmth. I tightened my grip on Crystalis, now half-buried in frost, and glared across the distance between us.
"Evolution." Other people had shown it already. Sosuke's transformation, Arthur's false moon, Rin against Lance Sterling. Those were evolutions born in battle. If I wanted to win, I had to believe my strength could carry me. I could not wait for Virgil to end this for me. I had fought Silas for years. This was my duel.
Progress comes only from challenge. I said it to myself so often I sounded like Arthur. I formed a saw of frost in my hand and let it spin toward him. Of course he dodged. The saw was part of the plan. I closed the gap mid-swing and watched it ricochet off the tunnel wall, curving back toward him from behind.
Silas met it with an easy parry, catching the blade in his gauntlet as if it were a toy.
"Shatter," I breathed. Ice answered my command. The saw burst into a scatter of glittering shards inside his palm and punched through his armor at the seams, sending frost crawling beneath the plates. I flicked Crystalis small, calling icicles from the frozen floor. They launched like needles. He dodged between them, fluid in armor, forcing me to weave between my own attack.
I slammed my sword down, aiming where I predicted he would move. A tongue of frozen earth surged along the line I wanted him to take. To the left, no—
He answered with blood. It poured from his gauntlet like a second wind, propelling him in the opposite direction. The air above filled with a terrible rain of bloody bullets. They came too fast and too many to dodge. I pushed Crystalis forward and tried to freeze the mana in the air into a shield. The blood tore through it, acid and fast, shredding my barrier.
Shot after shot hammered me. One pierced armor, another ripped flesh. Power felt like a tidal wave I could not hold. I tasted copper on my tongue. My limbs screamed. Hope curdled. For a moment I thought maybe General strength beat my strategy. Maybe I was outmatched.
Then instinct took over. Ice climbed my limbs without command, a reflexive armor wrapping me in white. Why had I not thought of this sooner? I had feared my own power would wither me, but the chill fit like second skin. I charged into the storm.
Silas had limits. Even a blight made of blood and shadow needed energy to make blood from mana. Each bullet he birthed leaned on his reserves. If he bled himself dry, his breath would thin and his defenses would fail.
Mana flared behind my blade as I forced it forward. He heaved his greatsword with both hands and swung in a wide arc. I met it. Metal crashed on metal, and I meant to let my ice ride into his weapon too. My ice could run through steel; I had trained Crystalis to carry my winter like a language.
Crash.
Crystalis splintered in my hands. The white blade shattered into a thousand glittering teeth. No. I felt the familiar winter crack into silence. My chest collapsed.
It was not random. Silas had traded his own weapon to break mine. He had gambled. Blood flew from his palm like a spear that pierced my frozen armor and punched out the other side. I spat red and tumbled backward.
"No risk is too great in the heat of battle," I forced out, tasting ash.
Water surged from me, explosive and sudden. It wrapped my limbs, a liquid cloak, because ice without flow is brittle. I had to know myself better than anyone. Without that, I could not beat him.
My arm rose and water pooled in the air, not plain water but a living current I could shape. The sphere spun, then split into churning segments. Silas slipped between them with the ease of a man born in war. He avoided my first pattern, agile beneath weighty armor. I answered with a different strike: I forced ice from the frozen ground into a sweeping wave, sealing exits and pressing him where I wanted.
Then I slammed my other arm down. The water I called came hurtling over the ice and onto him like a falling tide.
He howled. Blood erupted from his body, a geyser that blasted through the wave, shredding water into a red storm. His armor tore and flapped, plates hanging by scorched straps. For a moment he looked ragged and human. He was not down.
When the blood dispersed the water, the pieces did not simply vanish. The chunks I had split into were already half-frozen, spun from the frigid ground and whipped by my will. As his blood punched through and cleared paths, those ice shards rode the current inside the red rain. The viscous motion carried the needle-fine shards deep, whiplashing them into seams and gaps in his own armor where the blood had opened new channels. The shards bit, cutting along metal flanges and driving frost under plates. The effect was surgical: my water became blades in the wake of his own counter.
Then the ceiling cracked.
Armor cracked. My knees buckled under exhaustion. I tasted iron and cold. I dropped to one knee, fingers scraping mud for balance, wiping the blood from my mouth with a thumb.
Silas staggered back a single step, a sharp, guttural sound escaping him as the frost bit deep into the wounds his own blood had opened.
Silas lifted his hands slow, and for the first time I saw him unmask. He pulled his helmet up and hair fell loose, dark and tangled. His skin was pale and his eyes burned a steady red. He looked at me the way a predator regards a new, amusing wound.
"Well done," he said. "If you had any regrets about fighting me, surely they have left you." He took a step forward, blood spattering from a hundred small cuts. "I have not felt battle like this for years."
He watched Virgil at the edge. "I am surprised your ally has not intervened." His voice was a blade.
Virgil had stayed where he stood, watching, barely breathing.
Silas turned his gaze back on me and a question dropped like a stone. "Tell me, warrior. Why do you keep fighting for a world that does not care for you? Leaders use you. They will toss you aside. What power do you really hold over your fate?"
His words landed heavier than his strikes. I already knew, at the edges, what he meant. This was the chorus we all faced: soldiers used as tools.
"These leaders use us to fight their wars," he pushed. He clenched a fist as if squeezing the air. "What real choice do you have in this life?"
Frustration flickered across him. He did not understand why I kept going. I did not expect him to.
He breathed and said, "This world is not kind. It does not reward those who yield to orders. It rewards those who force change. I despise you who follow."
Even with his respect for my skill, my ideals were madness to him.
"Why would someone with your power submit to the weak?" he spat. Steam hissed from his cuts as his wounds began to knit.
I pressed a hand to my knee and hauled myself to my feet. I kept my eyes on the ground for a second, thinking. "I fight to protect the innocent," I said finally. "I am not yielding. I fight for what I think is right. The wars, the losses, the pain—those things justify standing between monsters and people who cannot fight back. If killing you here costs me my life and saves thousands, then my death is not a loss. My life is worth less than the many I can protect."
Silas did not answer for a full breath. He looked away for a moment and muttered, "There is kindness yet in the world." It sounded almost like a concession.
"Very well," he said after a pause. "We continue. This duel ends when one of us stops breathing."
I drew a long, cold breath and settled my stance. One more round.