Chapter 10-The Lockdown(3)

Chapter 10: 10-The Lockdown(3)

The heavy iron grate above them remained perfectly still.

For a long time, the only sound in the claustrophobic storm drain was the slow, rhythmic dripping of condensation and the jagged, uneven breathing of two defective Cultivators.

Above them, the heavy thud of the Enforcer patrols gradually faded into the distant smog, leaving behind a silence that felt heavier than the dirt.

Sol sat in the ankle-deep muck, his back resting against the curved, slime-coated brick. He kept his eyes closed.

Keeping them open in the absolute dark without channeling heat was a psychological torture he wasn’t ready to endure, a constant reminder of the moon’s curse.

But even with his eyes shut, he could feel Valera.

She was sitting inches away from him. The ambient temperature around her was unnaturally cold, a biting, winter chill that fought against the suffocating humidity of the sewer.

It was her Godblessed core, always humming, always threatening to drag her into the Permafrost.

But right now, it was a comfort. It kept the boiling pressure in his own chest at a manageable simmer.

"They’re gone," Valera finally whispered, her voice barely carrying over the dripping water.

Sol pushed a microscopic pulse of heat to his optic nerves.

Thump.

Flash.

The pitch-black tunnel violently illuminated in shades of thermal radiation. He saw the cold blue bricks, the freezing purple water pooling at their feet, and Valera.

Her thermal signature was breathtaking in a purely clinical way, a core of brilliant, terrifying white-blue frost, bordered by a soft, healthy yellow where his heat had stabilized her.

Darkness.

"They’re just sweeping the main arteries," Sol rasped, his voice sounding like two grinding stones. "The House of Vane doesn’t know the deep drains. Even the scavengers avoid this far down."

"Because of the rot?" Valera asked, shifting in the muck.

"Because of what the rot attracts," Sol corrected. "But the beasts shouldn’t bother us. We have a few hours before the Overseers realize the surface sweep failed and start sending the hounds into the underground."

He heard the rustle of heavy fabric. Valera was standing up.

"Then we don’t have time to sit in the mud," she said. Her tone had shifted.

The desperate, shivering girl from the alley was completely gone. In her place was the ghost of a high-born Fyrn noble, trained in schools Sol couldn’t even dream of.

"Stand up, Sol."

Sol frowned in the dark, but he pushed himself up from the curved wall, his boots splashing in the shallow water.

He gripped the silver blade he had taken from the Enforcer.

It was wrapped in the thick, blood-stained strips of his old coat, insulating the freezing metal from his burning hands.

"You said you were a butcher," Valera’s voice echoed from a few feet away. "Tell me how you handle a beast on the slaughter-line."

Sol pulsed his vision. Flash. He saw her standing perfectly straight in the center of the drain, holding her rusted iron pipe as if it were a ceremonial rapier. Darkness.

"They drag the beast in on chains," Sol said, confused by the sudden interrogation. "They lock its limbs to the iron table. I take the cleaver. I find the gap between the bones. I drop my weight, plant my feet, and chop down. Hard."

"Exactly," Valera said. Her boots splashed as she stepped closer in the dark.

"You plant your feet. You use gravity. You rely on the brute force of a heavy, wedge-shaped blade to do the work for you. That is butchery. It requires a stationary target and a weapon designed to crush as much as it cuts."

Sol felt a sudden, sharp tap against his shin. Valera had struck him lightly with her pipe.

"An Enforcer is not chained to a table," she continued, her voice echoing with a sharp, academic authority.

"They move. They parry. And that silver straight-blade you are holding is not a meat cleaver. It doesn’t have the weight at the head to crush through silver-wood armor. If you swing it like a butcher, it will bounce off their pauldrons, vibrate in your hands, and snap at the hilt."

"I melted the last guy’s armor just fine," Sol muttered, his grip tightening on the wrapped hilt.

"You pumped raw, unrefined thermal energy into a rusted piece of iron until it turned to slag!" Valera shot back.

"It worked because you ambushed a low-level guard. If you try to dump that much raw heat into a refined silver weapon during a prolonged fight, the blade will warp, your core will rapidly overheat, and you will detonate. You are fighting like a feral dog, Sol. It’s time you learn how the inner city fights."

Sol didn’t argue. He knew she was right. His chest still ached with a phantom, burning pressure from when he had swallowed the crystals whole.

He was a cultivator now, and he had zero actual technique.

"I can’t see your stances, Valera," Sol pointed out quietly.

"My vision... it’s a strobe. Flash and dark. I only see heat. I can’t track the exact angle of a blade in real-time."

The sewer was silent for a moment. Then, Sol felt a freezing chill approach him.

"I know," Valera said softly, stepping directly into his personal space. "So you won’t learn by watching. You’ll learn by feeling."

Cold, slender fingers reached out in the pitch blackness and wrapped over his burning hands on the hilt of the sword.

The contrast was shocking, her icy touch against his fever-hot skin, but they were both stabilized enough that it didn’t hurt. It just grounded them.

"Your grip is too tight," Valera instructed, manually adjusting his fingers in the dark.

"You’re strangling the hilt. You think power comes from tension. It doesn’t. Tension makes you slow. Loosen your bottom three fingers. Let the sword breathe."

Sol hesitated, fighting years of muscle memory, but he relaxed his grip slightly.

"Better," she murmured. "Now, your feet. You’re standing square, like you’re bracing for an impact. Turn your body sideways. Make yourself a smaller target. Right foot forward, left foot back. Weight on the balls of your feet."