Chapter 169 - 167:Another Fight.

Chapter 169: Chapter 167:Another Fight.

Tonight, the stands are gone, and with them their bright ribbons and their colourful banners.

Tonight, the grounds have returned to their regular, plain old dirt. The crowds are no more. The torches aren’t even lit.

​Khobi almost likes it better this way. The atmosphere of the tournament had been incredible –raucous and intimidating and so much more, but this is how he remembers fighting best. No armour, no ceremony.

Just the two of them, there to prove their worth.

On some level, he knows he shouldn’t be there. He should be back in his pile of blankets, resting.

His bones are aching and his body is crying out for him to slow down, to sleep and recover and dream, but how can he possibly, when all his dreams are of opportunities just like this?

​How can he possibly refuse this, when he’s secretly been just as impatient?

​It annoys him, more than it should, to know that this is something they both share.

​As if sensing the tension in the air, the wind picks up, and while Khobi’s breath turns to fog as it leaves his chest, his body feels inexplicably warm as he hefts his blade, and waits.

​A few paces from him –not far, but easily beyond arm’s reach, Loac is wearing the same stony expression he’s always wearing, but something about the usual glassy sheen of his eyes isn’t quite the same, like parts of the wall have been chipped away, to let light peer through the cracks.

​Under the light of the moon, their blue is the only colour Khobi can see.

​He remembers how they had sparked. How they’d been charged with lightning and how it had danced across his skin.

How he’s sure, without really knowing how, that his eyes had sparked just as bright.

​And then, in but a blink of those piercing blue eyes, Loac comes for him.

​The air shoots right out of his lungs.

​There’s no waiting, no pretence, just the impatience of a storm desperate to break.

It’s terrifying, and incredible all at once. With his speed, it was hard enough to track him by the light of day; now, with nothing but the moon to guide him, Khobi just barely gets his blade up in time.

All the same, up it comes, and with a snarl he grits his teeth and plants his feet and heaves it aside.

​The force still rattles his bones and sends him careening back a pace, and then another, as Loac follows up with a second, equally powerful strike that leaves Khobi’s ears ringing.

​It’s impossible, the force he comes at him with.

He has to be just as exhausted as Khobi is, if not more. They fought not long ago.

And they were both shattered for it. Still are, even, if the way Loac’s muscles flex and tear are anything to go by.

Drawn taut with each swift motion, they break and scream no more, but are spurred on by a will of iron and fire that they are helpless to resist.

​It’s the kind of terrifying pressure that demands Khobi answer in kind.

​Because isn’t he the same?

​His body burns as they flit back and forth across the dirt, kicking up sprites of dust in their wake.

The two blades howl into the night as they meet –long and loud –greeting each other like old friends, and the beat they strike up is a wild and heady tempo.

​It is music to Khobi’s ears.

​And just like that, he’s been drawn in by that same, easy rhythm that snared him the last time.

​He can’t help it. It’s just so easy to fall into step with him, meeting him blow for blow to the steadily rising cadence of his heartbeat; so easy to get lost as each of his movements ebbs and flows into another.

There’s no pattern, no tells like common soldiers have, for what comes next, but it always feels so seamless.

It’s unpredictable and wild, and Khobi relishes the way it feeds the heat bubbling up in his blood; the way it forces the fatigue from his limbs and replaces it with the kind of fresh fire that burns so fierce and so bright that the world around it burns with it.

​The way Loac moves with a sword was otherworldly by daylight.

​By moonlight, it’s kind of breathtaking.

​For every way Khobi shifts, Loac rises up to meet him, body and blade pressed taut against his.

Loac knows the way he moves now, the shapes he likes to make, and the way his body reacts.

To the observing eye, their blades seem to spend longer together than they do apart, twisting and grappling for dominance as their masters etch marks into each other and the earth around them.

​Blood drips into the dirt, dark droplets dappled under the night sky.

​And every now and then, in the rare moments where they withdraw and the tide of battle lends itself to stillness, their eyes meet, and Khobi can see those sparks ignite, and start to dance, like he can feel it, too.

​He looks pleased.

​(Not that that matters to Khobi.)

​(He’s not here for his approval, after all.)

​And then, suddenly, he feels it coming; that slightest shift in the beat; the moment of time where Loac’s going to try and break him.

They’ve traded nicks and scrapes, but so far it’s merely their clothes that have borne the worst of it.

​So far.

​Khobi decides to try and break him first.

​Funnelling all of that heat into one swift movement, he strikes, and feels a flash of triumph as his blade comes away wet and red.

Loac reels back, hissing through his teeth with eyes glimmering.

​And then he comes again, with renewed vigour. Like he’d been anticipating this.

Wanting it, even.

Aching for it. Khobi can feel the heat emanating from him too, now, rising and falling as they meet and part; building in the space between them.

That’s where the sparks are at their brightest; where he catches the clearest glimpses of a wide, toothy grin, and where occasionally their bodies brush as their blades tangle and wrest for control, searing wherever they meet.

​That’s where the heat is most dangerous, in that it makes him want to linger there.

​Dangerous, but incredible.

​Khobi can honestly say that he has never faced anyone quite like him.

​Oddly, Loac breaks time first.