The first clash between was a blur, like a silver and black comet of pure force. She expected to overwhelm him, but his speed was startling. The moon-blade met her armored fist not in a block, but in a perfect, flowing parry that deflected her immense strength aside. The tip of his blade whipped back, a pale streak aimed directly at her face. She jerked her head back, the blade passing so close she could feel the chill of its passage on her skin.
He went for a kill shot, right from the start, she thought, a thrill of genuine excitement coursing through her. Her vents hissed open fully, a cloud of white, superheated steam billowed from her armor as her body began to warm to the challenge.
She tried to comment on his surprising power, but before she could get a word out, he was on her again, a relentless assault of graceful strikes. His blade was a web of silver light, forcing her to constantly dodge and parry.
"Heyyyy!" she shouted, ducking under a particularly vicious slash. "I was talking!"
"Indeed," Halation replied, his voice a calm monotone as he continued his relentless assault. "Enemies in the ancient texts always engage in lengthy monologues just before they unleash their most powerful attacks. It is a common tactical error. Therefore, I have concluded that by preventing you from speaking, I am also preventing you from using your strongest techniques. It is a foolproof strategy."
Eryndra's eyes widened. She managed to block a flurry of strikes, her gauntlets ringing with the impacts. "Wow!" she yelled back, a note of genuine admiration in her voice. "That's… that's genius! You must be a tactical mastermind!"
Roy's groan from the comm was almost audible. "He's an idiot, Eryndra! A glorious, magnificent idiot! But his stupid logic is somehow working! His constant pressure isn't giving you a chance to activate your Apparition Mode!"
Eryndra took Roy's observation not as a warning, but as a challenge. She met Halation's next series of strikes head-on, her movements becoming more brutal, more direct. She abandoned defense, turning the duel into a raw contest of attrition. She battered him with powerful, straightforward blows, and while he was too fast to take a direct hit, the sheer force of her parries began to take their toll. She could feel the vibrations of his bones through his blade.
"Is that all you've got?" she taunted, deflecting a slash and countering with a punch that grazed his ribs. "You're going to lose if you can't hit harder than that!"
Then, he adapted. He feinted a lunge, a move he had repeated several times. Eryndra, anticipating it, moved to counter. But this time, it was a bait. He shifted his weight, his blade changing direction in a fluid arc. It slipped past her guard, the moon-blade carving a deep, searing gash across her forearm.
He leaped back, a look of almost childlike surprise on his pale face. He looked at his blade, then at the wound on Eryndra's arm, then back at his blade. "Yay," he said, his voice a flat, emotionless monotone. "I landed a hit. Now I just have to do that again. Until I win, yes? That is the typical conditions of victory, no?"
Eryndra stared at him, a slow, dangerous grin spreading across her face. "This guy… he actually knows what he's talking about. He's dangerous."
Roy's voice on the comm was a sigh of pure, unfiltered despair. "Eryndra, no, he's just… never mind. Just… just... whatever."
The fight intensified. Eryndra now moved with more caution, her earlier brute-force approach tempered by a newfound respect for his tactics. He took one hand off his two-handed sword, using his free hand to throw a series of short, distracting jabs while his main blade continued its deadly dance. She considered a brief retreat to activate her Apparition Mode, but a nagging thought held her back. If this child of purity is this strong, what in the hell is Brinevein herself going to be like? Better save my trump card.
In a sudden, desperate move, Halation kicked a nearby barrel of spices into her path. She dodged, but the barrel burst, sending a cloud of fine, pungent powder into the air. She inhaled sharply, and then let out a massive, unlademonlike sneeze.
The fight stopped. Halation immediately sheathed his moon-blade, reached into a pocket of his silken robes, and produced a small, immaculately clean, and neatly folded handkerchief. He walked over to Eryndra, who was still rubbing her nose, and presented it to her with a solemn, formal bow.
"Here you go," he said, his voice polite and earnest. "May the Line bless you."
Eryndra stared at him, utterly baffled. She took the offered tissue. "Uh… thanks? Why… why did you do that?"
A faint, almost proud smile touched Halation's lips. "My tutors were most insistent. It is a sign of proper etiquette to offer assistance to anyone who sneezes in one's presence. Failure to do so is a grave insult to one's elders. It only took them twelve thousand, four hundred and eighty-two separate, and I must say, quite severe, beatings over the course of two hundred and forty years to finally instill this lesson in me. I am quite proud to say I have not forgotten it since." He beamed, as if recounting his greatest achievement. He then walked back to the original position Warrex found him in, sat down, and crossed his legs, looking off into the distance. A moment later, his eyes widened. "Oh, wait! We were fighting. I forgot. My sincerest apologies." He stood, drawing his sword again. "Oh, but I am not supposed to apologize to the enemy. Sorry. Dang it. I did it again."
"I told you!" Roy roared into the comm.
Their battle spilled into the next chamber, a lavish dining hall where a dozen other elven warriors were hiding. They took one look at the two combatants, a whirlwind of silver light and raw, destructive power, and fled in screaming, abject terror.
Roy's eyes were glued to the drone feed relaying the chaotic, beautiful violence of Eryndra's duel with Halation. The speed, the power, the sheer, bizarre confidence of the Child of Purity… it didn't add up. He flicked a switch on the console, patching a live feed directly to the brig. The faces of Kaelor and Sorrowclaw, both looking equally engrossed in the battle, appeared on a side monitor.
"Alright, you two," Roy's voice was sharp, cutting through the low hum of the bridge. "We need to talk. This 'Child of Purity' nonsense. Neither of you thought to mention Lady Brinevein had anyone who could go toe-to-toe with Eryndra?"
Kaelor, his massive form hunched in his cell, looked genuinely dumbfounded. "Captain, I swear on the deepest trenches, we had no idea. The Children of Purity… we've seen them, yes, but only from a distance, during the Alliance councils."
Sorrowclaw, clinging to her cell bars, nodded vigorously, her usual theatrics replaced by a look of sincere confusion. "He's right, Captain! The last time I saw them, just a year ago at the last summit, they were… well, they were children! Actual children! No taller than a human nine-year-old dancing to his favorite tune!"
Roy leaned closer to the monitor, his brow furrowed. "Children?"
"Yes!" Kaelor insisted, his voice a low, earnest rumble. "Small. Scrawny, even. Strong for their size, strongest of her crew, no doubt, but nothing like… that." He gestured helplessly at the brigs monitor, where Eryndra and Halation were trading blows that cracked the air. "Back then, they were weaker than even my third-level commanders. This… this is something else entirely, this Halation would beat me in seconds."
A cold knot of unease formed in Roy's stomach. This mystery was getting deeper, and stranger, by the second. "Serenity," he commanded, "pull up the high-resolution drone footage from the Eryndra-Halation fight. Zoom in on Halation's face. Patch it through to the brig."
The main monitor flickered, then displayed a crystal-clear, slow-motion close-up of Halation's pale, emotionless face, his milky white eyes devoid of pupils, his features sharp and aristocratically elven.
Sorrowclaw gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. "His face… those strikingly handsome features… they're almost identical to the statues Lady Brinevein gifted me." She grimaced at the memory. "Or rather, forced me to take. They were statues of her great-grandfather, the founder of the Line." She leaned closer, her eyes narrowing. "But the eyes… blank, lifeless eyes… they are unmistakably the eyes of the child I saw just one year ago."
A chill ran down Roy's spine. "So, you're saying this isn't just some long-lost relative. This is the same person?"
"It has to be," Sorrowclaw whispered, her voice a mixture of awe and terror. "Something wild, something unnatural, must have happened to him. To have aged so rapidly, to have gained so much power… it's not possible through normal means."
Kaelor stared at the screen, his massive jaw slack with disbelief. The pieces weren't fitting together. They were shattering, revealing a picture far more monstrous and bizarre than he could have ever imagined. "Captain... I don't mean to sound disrespectful, but I recommend retreating and sinking her ship from afar. If the other two are this powerful-"
JFK quickly interrupted, "Good. Finally someone to lose sleep over."
Roy cut his feed to the brig, the images of Halation's ancient face and childlike eyes burning in his mind. Whatever Lady Brinevein was doing on this ship, it wasn't just piracy. It was an affront to nature itself.