Chapter 51
The beatings continue. But once Lis decides I am no longer entirely hopeless, she shifts from merely dismantling me to actively teaching me why I am being dismantled. Which, as it turns out, is somehow worse.
“Again,” she says after knocking me down for the third time in under a minute.
I reset my stance, breathing hard.
“You are watching my hands,” she says. “Why?”
“Because they are trying to hit me.”
“They are not what kills you.” She taps two fingers against her temple. “Intent kills you. Weight transfer. Hip alignment. Shoulder rotation. Learn to read the body before the strike comes.”
I grit my teeth and circle her again.
She attacks.
This time I watch lower and see the subtle shift of her weight before her shoulder turns.
I duck half a second earlier than I would have before. Her strike whistles over my head. For one glorious heartbeat, I think I succeeded in dodging it.
Then her knee drives into my stomach and I double over in pain.
“Better,” she says as I collapse to one knee, wheezing. “Still terrible. But better.”
That becomes the rhythm of our days.
Morning begins with pain.
Afternoon continues with pain.
And by evening, I am so battered that walking back to our quarters feels like a triumph in itself.
Yet beneath the bruises, something undeniable takes shape.
I am getting stronger.
Not merely faster or more powerful—those things had come with time and soul energy already—but sharper, more strategic.
My domain sees an improvement, too as my shadows obey with increasing precision. Where once they lashed outward wildly and crudely, now they form thinner, denser, more deliberate constructs.
I learn to split them between multiple targets without losing cohesion. To summon objects from their shadows and maintain control over them for a small period of time.
Lis teaches me to think before I strike; to see a second as a stretching expanses of time where I think rather than aimlessly react.
And though she never says it outright, I know she sees the improvement. Because every week she has to try a little harder to beat me.
By the time training ends each day, Moe is waiting with food.
She has made it a habit of setting up near the practice grounds beneath the partial shade of broken ruins, building a small cooking fire while Lis brutalizes me in the background.
The smell of whatever she is making usually reaches me right around the time I begin questioning whether death might be preferable to another sparring round.
The first time Lis stays to eat with us, it is because I blurt out an accidental invitation. Where Moe had always asked her to join us for a meal, she’d always refused.
I never gave it much mind then, but now it dawns on me that maybe…just maybe, she was waiting for me to extend the invitation?
As she accepts, she grumbles something along the lines of, “He’s always bragging about your food so I might as well taste it.”
Moe brightens immediately.
I find that for the first time, I don’t mind this type of interaction between them. Perhaps Lis has finally beaten my delusions out of me.
We sit down around a small fire as Moe hands out plates full of thick, juicy meat stew.
Lis is as dignified as ever as she eats. She doesn’t even hold the bowl, using her powers instead to levitate it in the air in front of her. She takes a small spoonful, chews for a few moments, then pauses.
Moe blinks as she anxiously awaits her friend’s verdict. “How is it?”
Then, in a tone so solemn one would think she had received a divine revelation, says, “This is glorious.”
From that day onward, we begin eating together after training almost every evening.
One would think this would be slightly awkward, especially after I accused her and Moe of some clandestine flirtation. Well, I’m happy to report that we’ve moved past that…somewhat.
Lis and I spend most meals bickering while Moe tries and fails to keep us civil. But then she gets a bit too close to Lis and I have to pull her back and remind her I’m the only one she can be that close to.
She understands now of course. She pats my head and calls me a good boy before continuing to talk to Lis as if nothing happens, but from a moderate distance.
“You drop your right shoulder before every heavy strike,” Lis remarks one evening while eating some sort of herb-seasoned steak Moe has made.
I scowl over my bowl. “Can we save that for after dinner?”
“No. Your flaws persist whether seated or standing.”
Moe laughs into her spoon.
“I landed three hits today.”
“Two and a half.”
“There is no such thing as half a hit.”
“There is when one lacks conviction.”
“You are intolerable.”
“And yet educational,” she fires back.
I have no comeback to that since it is the truth. We might argue day in and day out, but I respect her as my teacher—even when what she tells me rubs me the wrong way.
Another night, after I manage to force Lis to actually retreat during sparring—by accident, though we won’t mention that—I sit beside the fire feeling quite smug about myself.
“That was deliberate,” I brag to Moe as she hands me a plate.
Lis snorts. “No, it was desperate.”
“It worked.”
“By accident.”
“Your bitterness only proves I am improving.”
“My bitterness stems from seeing too much overconfidence in mediocre men.”
Moe nearly chokes laughing. I glare at both of them.
“I am not… mediocre,” I grumble.
“He’s not,” Moe defends me and I feel like I’ve grown ten feet tall. “He’s quite exceptional when he wants to.” She winks at me.
I stare at her, then my eyes drop to her lips. I lick mine in response. Her cheeks flush.
“I don’t think we’re talking about fighting anymore,” Lis says with a sigh and in the blink of an eye, she’s gone.
Moe and I barely note her absence as I tackle her to the ground and take her right there, by the ruins, in the open air.
Then she tells me just how exceptional I am at that.
A routine develops.
When the alarm that signals the start of a new day blares through Aimaxion, I open my eyes, fuck Moe awake, shower, have breakfast, then fight my assigned battle.
In the afternoon, while I get my ass kicked by Lis, Moe scribbles away into her notebook.
By now she’s filled about a dozen of them, but she still hasn’t allowed me to take a peek.
When the day is about to end, Moe makes dinner for us, after which we retire to our room for some alone time that inevitably ends up with Moe on her back and me between her legs—also how we usually fall asleep.
One evening, after a particularly savage spar in which I manage to force Lis to use both hands for nearly half a minute before she flips me onto my back hard to make me bleed even from my eyeballs, we sit around the fire while Moe serves dinner.
Lis takes her first bite. She closes her eyes briefly, enjoying the flavor.
Then turns to Moe and with complete seriousness says, “If he ever hurts you, I will make him regret it a hundredfold.”
Moe stifles a smile. “I think I can manage to do it myself.”
“You’re too soft. You’ll forgive him too soon.”
“No. I will not. In fact—” she sneaks a glance at me—“he knows he must answer for his mistakes if he wrongs me. And he won’t hold it against me, will you Nyk?” She bats her lashes at me.
“No,” I grumble.
“See. He’s well trained,” Moe jokes.
“I have about a hundred techniques to inflict serious bodily harm,” Lis continues. “And a few more to inflict pain at the level of the soul. If you ever need some ideas.”
Moe laughs. “I’ll make sure to ask, then.”
I stare between the two of them, noting the way they’re always conspiring against me.
“You two know I am standing right here. Why are you talking about a hundred plus ways of torturing me to my face?”
“To remind you of what’s going to happen when you upset her,” Lis replies smoothly.
Moe nods. “Reminders are good. He needs to know to behave.”
I shake my head and mutter under my breath, “You two are so damn strange.”
But as the three of us sit there, in the crimson light, laughing and exchanging jabs, I realize something.
For the first time since entering Aimaxion, this feels like comfortable…perhaps too comfortable.
I spoke too soon.
The following day, my fight is announced on the obelisk, whispers abound all around me.
Nykander v’Kyro (559) vs Eragon Berik (701)
“Didn’t you say the fights would be within the same point range?” I ask Lis.
“Usually,” she answers curtly, her eyes on the obelisk. From her demeanor, I can tell she’s not pleased with this either.
“What’s his level? Domain?” Moe quickly asks. “We have limited time to put together a strategy.”
Lis closes her eyes. “Shadow Domain. Level Eight.”
Both Moe and I freeze. I don’t know how she knows, but that’s not important now.
“Level Eight?” I echo.
“Shadow domain, too?” Moe’s voice is filled with worry.
Lis continues. “You should be around a level five. Not yet six, that would have come with a qualitative change and you would have felt it.”
“How can I defeat someone three levels above me?” I ask, suddenly petrified.
“Nyk…” Moe whispers, grabbing onto my sleeve.
“Remember your training,” Lis states. “And don’t die. The way will manifest itself.”
I want to ask her to be less vague, to tell me precise ways in which I can fight this warrior. But before I can do so, the world shifts.
Reality fractures into crimson shards and black static. Moe, Lis and everyone who remained in audience are pulled aside behind the invisible barrier as the arena builds itself from the ground up.
Stone rises around me in towering arches and shattered columns. A vast cathedral takes shape beneath a blood-red sky.
Broken stained glass hangs in jagged remnants from windows high above, casting fractured strips of crimson and violet over the floor below.
Moonlight—or whatever passes for it in this cursed realm—spills through the gaps in pale shafts, carving islands of illumination amid an ocean of shadow.