Chapter 27 #2
I charge, nūr engulfing my wrists and blade. Each step light, each breath a calculation.
A pace from his attack zone, I feint left before cutting low, the khanjar in my mouth slashing at his ribs, spraying blood.
He pivots, a right-armed hook glancing off my cheek.
One direct blow from him is like playing with death, so I jump right and then drive low.
The movements dance, too rapid for the naked eye as we whirl faster and faster, each clash of our blades a deadly song, each drop of blood nourishment for the clay.
But he offers no chance to breathe. When I scramble for space into the date palms, he closes the distance; when I parry and counter into his attack zone with a slice of nūr, he shuffles back.
His Three-Feathered affinity hardens his skin into the leathery cast of an azhdahak serpent to snuff out my meagre Second-Stratum nūr against his all-encompassing Third-Stratum.
My chest burns from an open wound. The crowd senses my pain, jeering. Fayez headbutts me, crushing my nose before flipping me to the ground, his grappling techniques unparalleled.
Doubts creep into whispers, dwindling my strength. And Fayez loves it. He pounds his foot on my left leg.
‘Is this it?’ he snarls. ‘I expected a decent fight.’
Colours burst in my vision and with them, a collection of memories. The taunting as Fayez had me crawl to his feet. I trained, more than him, more than anyone. You made a vow, Khamilla. You win by rage.
My arm lashes out, fingers gripping Fayez’s neck. ‘Fool.’ Spitting out the khanjar, my tongue opens, bonds erupting with nūr as my head crashes upon his.
‘Another feint! She uses a tongue bond!’ The crowd baulks as he stumbles away.
My arms lift. One leg. Another leg. Now I am standing. My left leg threatens to collapse but I rewire the bonds, the muscles left no choice but to obey. My hand wipes away blood on my cheek. I cannot use a tongue bond again without sacrificing immense Heavenly Energy.
Everything slows as the metaphysical reality blossoms, rearranging Fayez’s bonds into neat lines, predictable lines.
Delving into my rose-scented bonds, I will them to tighten into Second-Stratum, summoning which combines Heavenly Energy through multiple bonds.
My body is limited and my muscles shred.
I float back to the human realm, time galloping forward. Before me, I do not see Fayez: I see enemies, I see the Sepāhbad, I see Akashun. I even see the emperor. I see people I fear. I see my mistakes. I see a test I shall pass.
Fayez recovers from my hit, transforming his balled hands into sharp talons. Flashing a lethal look, he says, ‘Now the duel begins.’ He lunges and I roll on to the ground before my face gets battered. A barrier of nūr rises around me, forcing him into a wide berth.
With the barrier, my left leg rotates, bonds expanding as Second-Stratum compresses the nūr into a dense formation of golden chained tails lashing around Fayez’s ankles. It singes his skin, but his legs thicken into the coiled scales of an azhdahak, deflecting the worst penetration.
To this, I stomp with bone-breaking force, splintering the nūr into miniscule needles to sink into his scales. It slows his movement, leaving him no choice but to counter with long-range manoeuvres. He rolls six throwing knives between his fingers before his scales explode around his wrists.
In a burst of steel, the blades whine toward me.
Crouching into a narrow but weightless third stance, I whip out a second blade, twirling my khanjars around my fingers.
Inhaling deeply, my vision narrows, nūr engulfing my blades.
The speed of the projectiles slows from the meditation, and in a flurry of movements, I deflect the knives in clanking slashes.
It works in his favour. I turn at the last blade, exposing my side, forcing me to rotate my shoulder bonds.
I throw up a vertical shield of two planes of nūr, but his scaled body erupts with a fiery burst, shattering through it with a hidden blade.
Pain hisses across my chest and I blindly dive, left arm swinging under, clocking him on the jaw with knuckles covered in nūr.
He reels back and I gather my bearings. He could have punctured my heart, I realise, if not for my wild punch.
Unrelenting, he throws hook after hook, pursuing me to the edge of the arena.
My forearms rotate through each blow, muscles trembling.
I suddenly slash up, but his scales shift, azhdahak affinity bursting with fire, liquidating his skin.
My knife skids up into the air, flying high. His eyes brighten and he pounces.
My feet slide back as I counter: flick palm, flick palm, wrist cross, turn, thrust, there!
I sidestep outward, and stoop, palms slapping into the dirt.
‘Die,’ I hiss. My toe bonds expand, bathing my legs in nūr, slamming into his chest. He soars back, but before my relief manifests, he curls mid-air and rolls, landing smoothly.
I stoop into ninth stance, thumbs at the pommels of my blades. As I channel a rapid seven-breath meditation, my skin ignites with nūr from my soul like white fire. I urge the bonds to pulse faster, the compression so dense, the clay cracks beneath me.
We are at another deadlock, the momentum of battle teetering on an edge.
I wipe sweat from my brow, jaw clenching. When I feel the Heavenly Energy peak inside my soul, I shoot forward, faster than he can see. The force propels me to his side, and I stick out my knife to slash, tearing his ribcage, across his neck, jaw and leg.
At the final thrust, he uses my hunched form and cracks his elbow into my back.
‘Quqnoos,’ I hear him chant as I roll forward, only looking up in time to see his affinity transform him, again. This time the second feathered creature: a winged quqnoos. Red fiery wings blaze the metaphysical arena in tremoring waves, and I throw up my arms at this mesh of human-phoenix form.
My mind scrambles at the unexpected positioning. A clever move by him, for his large body gives me no space to manoeuvre.
To his surprise, I throw myself on to his large scaled back.
He rolls his wings right to crush me, but I twist to cement my feet, mustering Second-Stratum, ninth stance, which steadies my body in the wide staggered position.
I twist and flip along the scales even when he lifts his wings.
Second stance, fourth stance and fifth stance, before I run to the top and leap, twisting, my feet hammering on to his fiery head.
My skin burns and we go rolling in a tangle of talons and limbs. His knee snaps my jaw and blood leaks into my eyes. But my arms blindly catch his talons. Through strained, bloodied teeth, I pull backwards. His quqnoos form shrinks and he slips from my grasp.
Cursing, I pivot with my right heel, crunching my hands into dense balls of Heavenly light. Compressing them, I launch the spheres in quick succession. A blast hits him in the chest. At the next projection, his fiery wings bracket his body, fire absorbing the nūr in a crackle and ejecting it.
The explosion knocks me on to my stomach into a bundle of date palms. Blearily, I pick myself back up, glancing at the trees. Yabghu’s advice returns: use my environment. What if I create my own?
I crunch my hands again; instead of aiming for Fayez, I gamble on the Heavenly Energy reserves I have left and sprout dense walls of nūr around the amphitheatre, using the structure’s pillars to form them.
My form trembles when I manifest eight different walls of nūr like a forest of cosmic light.
I leap over them, on to the topmost ledge of the amphitheatre, the sandstone fissuring from the force of my Heavenly Energy–imbued body.
On either side of me, officers lurch back a bit, though the Veil separates us.
I stalk around the ledge, stepping over them, my bare feet leaving bloody footprints on the sandstone.
Shoving the hilt of another khanjar between my teeth, I pass Adviser Arash and the Sepāhbad, who leans back with crossed arms, watching me form barrier after barrier above their seats.
Fayez turns in a slow circle. My breath labours from maintaining so many walls, but I start to leap from one to the other, my movements growing too fast for his perception, behind him – beside him – over him.
He turns at each brush of wind created by my passing, whipping his blades, but he is half a breath delayed, unable to pinpoint my location.
Instead, his knives shatter the maze of barricades. I forcibly erect a new wall each time.
I squat over the barricade behind him, my hands curling on the top. He whirls around, sensing me. But that one second is enough to target him. I clasp my hands and fall back from the barrier.
‘Dragon scales,’ I order through the khanjar. My finger bonds burst wiry tendrils of nūr into the wall, merging them together with my leg and back bonds to form a net formation of amber whipping upwards, right into his face. The density skewers his jaw.
I hit the ground and do not wait. I pounce, as he howls from my needles of nūr. This is it.
When I am a breath away from his hunched form, time slows. Something is wrong. His lips move as if he is channelling breaths. His fingers curl inwards. My heart stutters and the air crackles around us.
The tip of the khanjar in my mouth kisses his neck. Fayez’s eyes rise slowly – patiently – as time slows.
‘Maximum iron-fist.’ The words are uttered calmly.
I do not see what happens next.
One second I am there and the next, I see a flash of glowing eyes, a white spark, and then I am in the air, sailing back across trees -no, through trees. My back smacks against the bedrock, but I splinter through it, landing in a crater of dirt, sand and debris.
The sky shakes above me like Judgement Day, and I realise it’s my tilting vision. Blood seeps through my clothes. I cannot sense my right hand, two fingers crushed. My left leg is unrecognisable.