Chapter 127: Training [2]

Ulvakor blinked. "No wait, it’s completely normal since you’re like somewhere between Luminary and Arcanist and I’m an Ascendant. So it’s natural."

"Are you saying..." Alden’s expression shifted into something that was specifically and stubbornly not gratitude. "That’s cheating! You’re two stages above me. That fight was decided before it started. That’s cheating."

Ulvakor stared at him in complete silence for a full two seconds and sighed.

"Alden."

"What?"

"This wasn’t a fight, remember? I said I was testing your power levels."

"Then you should have tested at a fair level."

"That’s not how testing works."

"Feels like cheating."

"It was not cheating."

"Definitely cheating." Alden looked away.

"Alden."

"You could have at least pretended to struggle."

"I was already holding myself back." Ulvakor rubbed his forehead with the quiet exhaustion of a person who has only been someone’s trainer for approximately thirty minutes and is already finding it educational. "Fine. If you want a fair fight, I’ll find you someone around your stage."

Alden looked back at him. "That would be a real fight."

"Wait here."

Ulvakor turned and walked off the training ground. Alden stood in the center of the platform and waited, rolling his shoulder, checking the sword again out of habit.

A few minutes later, Ulvakor came back with someone.

The newcomer was a Primordial who looked roughly Alden’s age in appearance, with smooth white skin, pale white eyes that carried the specific emptiness of someone who considers most things beneath their attention, and a bald head that made the condescension in his expression somehow easier to read.

"This is one of my other students," Ulvakor said. "Around the same stage as you. His name is Severian."

Severian looked at Alden.

His eyes moved from top to bottom. There was no warmth in them, no curiosity. It was the quick, silent assessment of someone classifying an object.

Ulvakor pointed at Alden. "He’s who you’re fighting."

The expression on Severian’s face went darker. He clicked his tongue audibly. "Really, Master? A lowly mortal?" He said the last word the way you say the name of something you found in your shoe. "I’d rather not waste the floor space."

Alden’s grip on the sword shifted slightly.

’There it is. Same thing all morning. ’Lower being’, ’mortal’, ’doesn’t belong here.’ Different voices, same song.’

Ulvakor looked at Severian with the specific calm of someone who has the authority to tell anyone to do anything and doesn’t need to raise his voice to make that clear. "You’ll do as I say. Without the commentary."

Severian held the expression for another second, then exhaled through his nose and let it go. "Fine."

The two of them stepped onto the platform and took their positions several meters apart.

’I’ve been dealing with this attitude since I woke up this morning,’ Alden thought, watching Severian settle into his stance. ’From every direction. I’ve had enough patience today.’

His sword came up.

Ulvakor stepped to the side and raised one hand. "Ready?"

Severian raised his chin. Alden’s lips pulled into something cold.

"Begin."

Ulvakor dropped his hand.

Alden moved immediately, his feet pushing off hard from the marble and closing the gap fast. His sword came down wrapped in Purple Eclipse, violet light blazing along the full length of the blade, the combined elements burning with everything he had left after the first exchange.

Severian watched him come.

And didn’t move.

He assumed the stance. The same one Ulvakor had used. One open palm forward, the other hand loose at the waist, not even shifting his weight.

’He’s doing the same thing Ulvakor did?’

Then one word came out of Severian’s mouth.

"Rai."

The air changed.

Not the way Ulvakor’s had changed, not quite as crushing, but the same kind of phenomenon. Weight descended on the training ground without a visible source, and the breath Alden was drawing took more effort than it should have.

He felt it hit his momentum. Not physically, there was no wall, no barrier but the ambient force of whatever Severian had released, pressing against his body from all sides and turning forward motion into something that cost more than it should.

His teeth came together.

’I’m not stopping.’

He pushed through it, step by dragging step, forcing his legs to keep the pace even as his body complained about the effort. The sword was still up. Purple Eclipse was still burning. He kept coming.

Severian waited until Alden was close enough.

Then he raised both hands and caught the blade.

Not with a catch born of speed or desperation. With the calm, measured precision of someone who has done this before and knows exactly how much force is coming. His palms came up and the flat of the blade landed between them.

A thick, dense coating wrapped Severian’s hands. Not mana in the normal sense, it had a different density, more solid, visibly orange-gold in hue, and where it met the violet light of Purple Eclipse, the two energies pressed against each other and the blade’s output stopped completely.

Alden pushed.

The sword didn’t move.

He pushed harder, both hands on the hilt, putting everything remaining into the forward force.

CRACK.

A hairline fracture appeared near the hilt.

CRACK.

Another, racing down the flat.

CLANG.

The sword came apart. Shattered in fragments of steel scattering across the ground in every direction, leaving Alden holding a broken hilt with the wooden grip and nothing past it.

He stood there.

__________

After a few moments, Severian lowered his hands and dusted them off in unhurried claps. He turned his back.

"Next time," he said toward the air rather than toward Alden specifically, already walking away, "don’t summon me here for a mortal to waste my time against."

Alden managed to get himself up onto his knees. He knelt among the scattered fragments of the sword, his face bruised, hair fallen forward across his face, his clothes disheveled from the kinetic backlash of the exchange.

Ulvakor walked over.

"Now do you understand?"

Alden looked up at him.

"...Okay," he said, with the extreme reluctance of someone conceding a point they really didn’t want to concede.

He turned the broken hilt over in his hands. "What was that? The coating on his hands."

"So you noticed it." Ulvakor smiled faintly and reached down, pulling Alden back to his feet by the arm.