Searing 27, 116
When we last left our heroine, her life force was draining out of her body and into a sword the size of herself, but an ancient master of warrior magic was going to murder her with superior sorcery and skill long before she could finish dying by herself.
That’s all still happening!
Master Gerhard was a patient warrior, and so he did not press his advantages yet. He held his spear lightly in one hand, slowly circling the struggling aspirant, his smile gentle- but not quite reaching his eyes.
Gerhard’s spear (the actual weapon, Imogen had no basis to judge anything else) was pretty average in length, measuring maybe seven feet to her glance. It was artwork as much as a weapon, a smooth, curling pattern of silvery materials running from the jeweled cap on the butte to the ornate golden head. If she saw it hanging on a wall she would assume that it was an ornamental spear, perhaps- as a Reaved work, she was certain it was preternaturally deadly. It probably was worth noting that the tip of the spear blazed with sunfire.
It was a triumphal weapon, and Imogen’s sword compared very unfavorably to it. The golden sheen on the blade had grown into a nimbus as her aether poured through the hilt, but even when the transformation completed it was going to be inferior to Gerhard’s armament for some time. So the first trick was going to be negating his range advantage and, hopefully, keeping that spear’s tip away from her vulnerable greatsword.
In service of that, Imogen lunged for the old master, swinging her greatsword such that the tip described wide, winding arcs from the level of her head to her hips. This was a method for controlling space and meant more to push back foes with short weapons, but it might also entic-
Gerhard allowed himself to be pushed back for several full seconds, then struck. His spear drove through the whirling defense with brilliant precision, aiming to take out her left arm at a blow. Fortunately, this was not the first time Imogen had fought a polearm, and so she was prepared to pull her sword back, twisting it into the proper guard. She caught the side of the spear against her blade and forced it downward, away from her arm, trapping it.
”Hah!” Imogen laughed, ”Got your spear!”
The canonical follow-up of the style was to release the blade with one arm and try to grapple Gerhard, but Imogen couldn’t risk it. The man was unbelievably strong for his size, and if she let him knock her sword away… well, there were worse ways to fail the Trial than death. Instead, she opted to try pressing him with a shoulder, separating him from his spear and hopefully forcing him to drop the weapon.
A nice maneuver if it worked, which it didn’t. Instead, Gerhard drove his spear directly into the ground and pivoted around it, kicking Imogen squarely in the ribs and forcing her to disengage. She didn’t hear any ribs crack, but the blistering agony was more than enough to elicit concern. It also robbed her of the opportunity to make any sort of quip, which was a vicious attack in and of itself.
That had been the first of her three stratagems, relying on what she knew he knew. The theory had been sound, but the implementation wasn’t going to be smooth enough in a world where he had forty years of expertise on her. As Imogen stumbled backward, she caught her breath and abandoned that plan as unworkable. Next.
Well, on to the next after she dealt with his counterstroke, anyway. She’d created distance which, she recalled almost too late, was actually a bad thing. Gerhard raised his left hand into the air above him and called forth a second spear, a duplicate of the first. It took the aspirant a moment to realize that it was not limned with golden fire- a simulacrum, not a second Pact weapon.
She didn’t have much time to appreciate this before Gerhard launched it at her with a smooth motion. Though his pike was not a shortspear, built for throwing, his power was such that it flew unerring. Imogen battered the pike with the side of her sword, driving it into the ground, where it began to disintegrate- only to be followed by a second. Then a third!
”Fuck.”
Imogen cursed quietly, not because she feared to offend the master’s ears but because she couldn’t spare the effort of yelling. This was a ploy, either to tire her out (for the duplicate spears must cost Gerhard almost nothing) or to wait until she missed a trick and got skewered. As she batted another false spear aside, she grunted, realizing the third reason- every blow she was striking with her sword was leaving bruises on her flesh.
Well, fine, time for plan two. He couldn’t be permitted to remain at range, and thankfully she had one way to punish him for it, something so stupid that he would never see it coming. That was a feature of both her remaining plans, but this one was the least suicidal.
Focusing her frustration and rising concern that she might well lose this battle, Imogen forced her hands to swell, growing large and leathery as her nails lengthened and widened into claws. An Orkhan’s claws, when they were roused, were large and tough, but not nearly as dextrous as ordinary humanoid digits. Useful for a secondary attack, perhaps, but it was not recommended to try to hold on to a hilt with them during swordplay.
So she didn’t. Making sure to keep in contact with the greatsword (for to lose it would short-out the rite, in the worst possible way) she transferred her hands to the greatsword blade, holding it mordhau. Inadvisable for a human’s hand, even with mitts, but her imitation dragon’s claws found the blade relatively easy to hold. With the weapon now held like a hammer, Imogen swung- for one of the stupid floating rocks at the edge of the arena.
Though Imogen didn’t understand the nature of the magic holding the rocks, she doubted it was any more powerful than it had to be. It was dramatic, for ritual purposes, and not meant to hold up to being smacked with all of the force an Orkhan mainlining adrenaline could muster. Therefore, she aimed for a relatively small rock (perhaps the size of her head), and laid into it with a huge blow.
The entire world went black for several seconds, and the sound of the wind disappeared until silence resolved into ringing. Imogen blinked furiously, grasping her blade tight, even though she could feel that the blow had cut into her palm. Blood dripped from her grasp, and she only hoped that none of the liquids coming out of her right now were skull-related.
It took seven heartbeats before her vision returned; though the force she had applied against the rock had felt like a skull-shattering blow, evidently the Reaving wasn’t going to leave her entirely concussed. When she could see, the first thing she looked for was Gerhard- it took her too long to find him, on the other side of the arena, pulling himself off the ground. He wasn’t smiling at all, the first time Imogen had seen him look anything other than calm, collected, and even a bit patronizing. He was still holding his spear, but his left arm was hanging limp at his side. She doubted the rock had hit with enough force to break the bone, but with a man of his age…
“That,” he stated, not sounding even a little pained, “was quite stupid.”
He wasn’t wrong, but that was really the basis of the plan, and it looked like some stupid ideas worked. Imogen wanted to say something like “well, you already voted to fail me”, which would be kind of fun and clever, but the agony in her head was still too pronounced for that kind of wordplay.
Also, she couldn’t help but notice that he was still gripping his actual Pact Weapon. She’d done nothing more than disable his duplication.
Fine, then. Plan three. In plan three, she would either disarm him or die in agony, and honestly it might be both. And the best part was, it was very easy and simple! To begin, Imogen charged.
She charged, still holding her blood-drenched sword by the blade, bringing it up diagonally in front of her eyes. One-armed, Gerhard had little choice but to respond with his own attack, attempting to drive her back, stabbing one-handed with the flaming tip of his spear.
Imogen caught the tip in her sword’s guard, allowing it to pass right through the guard ring. If she were holding on to the handle, she might have twisted it from his grasp right there, but her claw-hands simply weren’t well-suited to the task. Worse yet, though he had one arm and she two, the strain of the initiation had eroded her strength, and she wasn’t at all sure she could pull the weapon away from him.
So instead, she guided his thrust towards her own calf. The spear went in easily, and excruciatingly, the fire searing the fat and muscle as it entered. It took all of her remaining will not to pass out from the shock, but she wasn’t quite done. She had suppressed the urge to express the scales on her leg as she led the spear in, but she released that now, causing her skin to swell up, trapping the Pact weapon. Finally, she twisted, her body, leg and sword acting as focal points.
And tore the weapon from the master’s grasp.
The injury was agonizing, but not life-threatening; nevertheless, it was the end of her ability to fight. She could hardly stand.. But she’d noticed that Gerhard had kept himself to roughly her own limitations- he had summoned only one Pact weapon, he had not Danced with the spear, and he had chosen to throw only weak reflections of his weapon, refusing to let it leave his hand. Thus, she intuited, just as she would lose the duel if her hands left her sword, so must he.
In response, the blade in her hands grew hot, then hotter, and burst into a sudden conflagration of sunfire.
”Ahehe.” She giggled, delirious. ”Guess I passed.”
Passed the fuck out, in fact.
~
It would be explained to Imogen later that there were two parts to the initiation- body and spirit. No acolyte who was recommended for initiation was ever a bad fighter, no master was going to send their student to probable death. The purpose of the pre-Trial ‘test’ was, in many ways, a farce. A master would object, even lacking a proper basis, and if the initiate was so blindly obedient that they would simply accept indefinite unfair rejection…
“The purpose of Reaved sunlight” Master Gerhard explained to Imogen as she recovered in the Sanctuary’s infirmary, “Is to burn away lies. I don’t expect acolytes to guess the scheme, but they must understand that the truth is being hidden before they can expose it.”
”...isn’t that what the magic is for?” Talking still hurt, but curiosity could be stronger than pain.
“Yes,” the master responded, taking her question more seriously, “But sunfire is a tool for expressing truth, not for divining it. If you stare into the sun, Imogen Ward, all you get is blinded. The truth which you express is inside yourself, your soul. There is a part of everyone which understands what is right and what is wrong- but that is a skill you must train through exercise, like any other. That is the fire which you have captured in your sword. Now fan it until your blade is righteous as the stars.”
And that was the end of the initiation, though not of Imogen’s time with Master Gerhard, who taught her much about Reaving which was not simply swordplay. But of all the words which Imogen received from each of her masters in the days to come, she never heard any as clear and beautiful as the ones which Master Gerhard gave her right after beating her nearly to death.
When we last left our heroine, her life force was draining out of her body and into a sword the size of herself, but an ancient master of warrior magic was going to murder her with superior sorcery and skill long before she could finish dying by herself.
That’s all still happening!
Master Gerhard was a patient warrior, and so he did not press his advantages yet. He held his spear lightly in one hand, slowly circling the struggling aspirant, his smile gentle- but not quite reaching his eyes.
Gerhard’s spear (the actual weapon, Imogen had no basis to judge anything else) was pretty average in length, measuring maybe seven feet to her glance. It was artwork as much as a weapon, a smooth, curling pattern of silvery materials running from the jeweled cap on the butte to the ornate golden head. If she saw it hanging on a wall she would assume that it was an ornamental spear, perhaps- as a Reaved work, she was certain it was preternaturally deadly. It probably was worth noting that the tip of the spear blazed with sunfire.
It was a triumphal weapon, and Imogen’s sword compared very unfavorably to it. The golden sheen on the blade had grown into a nimbus as her aether poured through the hilt, but even when the transformation completed it was going to be inferior to Gerhard’s armament for some time. So the first trick was going to be negating his range advantage and, hopefully, keeping that spear’s tip away from her vulnerable greatsword.
In service of that, Imogen lunged for the old master, swinging her greatsword such that the tip described wide, winding arcs from the level of her head to her hips. This was a method for controlling space and meant more to push back foes with short weapons, but it might also entic-
Gerhard allowed himself to be pushed back for several full seconds, then struck. His spear drove through the whirling defense with brilliant precision, aiming to take out her left arm at a blow. Fortunately, this was not the first time Imogen had fought a polearm, and so she was prepared to pull her sword back, twisting it into the proper guard. She caught the side of the spear against her blade and forced it downward, away from her arm, trapping it.
”Hah!” Imogen laughed, ”Got your spear!”
The canonical follow-up of the style was to release the blade with one arm and try to grapple Gerhard, but Imogen couldn’t risk it. The man was unbelievably strong for his size, and if she let him knock her sword away… well, there were worse ways to fail the Trial than death. Instead, she opted to try pressing him with a shoulder, separating him from his spear and hopefully forcing him to drop the weapon.
A nice maneuver if it worked, which it didn’t. Instead, Gerhard drove his spear directly into the ground and pivoted around it, kicking Imogen squarely in the ribs and forcing her to disengage. She didn’t hear any ribs crack, but the blistering agony was more than enough to elicit concern. It also robbed her of the opportunity to make any sort of quip, which was a vicious attack in and of itself.
That had been the first of her three stratagems, relying on what she knew he knew. The theory had been sound, but the implementation wasn’t going to be smooth enough in a world where he had forty years of expertise on her. As Imogen stumbled backward, she caught her breath and abandoned that plan as unworkable. Next.
Well, on to the next after she dealt with his counterstroke, anyway. She’d created distance which, she recalled almost too late, was actually a bad thing. Gerhard raised his left hand into the air above him and called forth a second spear, a duplicate of the first. It took the aspirant a moment to realize that it was not limned with golden fire- a simulacrum, not a second Pact weapon.
She didn’t have much time to appreciate this before Gerhard launched it at her with a smooth motion. Though his pike was not a shortspear, built for throwing, his power was such that it flew unerring. Imogen battered the pike with the side of her sword, driving it into the ground, where it began to disintegrate- only to be followed by a second. Then a third!
”Fuck.”
Imogen cursed quietly, not because she feared to offend the master’s ears but because she couldn’t spare the effort of yelling. This was a ploy, either to tire her out (for the duplicate spears must cost Gerhard almost nothing) or to wait until she missed a trick and got skewered. As she batted another false spear aside, she grunted, realizing the third reason- every blow she was striking with her sword was leaving bruises on her flesh.
Well, fine, time for plan two. He couldn’t be permitted to remain at range, and thankfully she had one way to punish him for it, something so stupid that he would never see it coming. That was a feature of both her remaining plans, but this one was the least suicidal.
Focusing her frustration and rising concern that she might well lose this battle, Imogen forced her hands to swell, growing large and leathery as her nails lengthened and widened into claws. An Orkhan’s claws, when they were roused, were large and tough, but not nearly as dextrous as ordinary humanoid digits. Useful for a secondary attack, perhaps, but it was not recommended to try to hold on to a hilt with them during swordplay.
So she didn’t. Making sure to keep in contact with the greatsword (for to lose it would short-out the rite, in the worst possible way) she transferred her hands to the greatsword blade, holding it mordhau. Inadvisable for a human’s hand, even with mitts, but her imitation dragon’s claws found the blade relatively easy to hold. With the weapon now held like a hammer, Imogen swung- for one of the stupid floating rocks at the edge of the arena.
Though Imogen didn’t understand the nature of the magic holding the rocks, she doubted it was any more powerful than it had to be. It was dramatic, for ritual purposes, and not meant to hold up to being smacked with all of the force an Orkhan mainlining adrenaline could muster. Therefore, she aimed for a relatively small rock (perhaps the size of her head), and laid into it with a huge blow.
The entire world went black for several seconds, and the sound of the wind disappeared until silence resolved into ringing. Imogen blinked furiously, grasping her blade tight, even though she could feel that the blow had cut into her palm. Blood dripped from her grasp, and she only hoped that none of the liquids coming out of her right now were skull-related.
It took seven heartbeats before her vision returned; though the force she had applied against the rock had felt like a skull-shattering blow, evidently the Reaving wasn’t going to leave her entirely concussed. When she could see, the first thing she looked for was Gerhard- it took her too long to find him, on the other side of the arena, pulling himself off the ground. He wasn’t smiling at all, the first time Imogen had seen him look anything other than calm, collected, and even a bit patronizing. He was still holding his spear, but his left arm was hanging limp at his side. She doubted the rock had hit with enough force to break the bone, but with a man of his age…
“That,” he stated, not sounding even a little pained, “was quite stupid.”
He wasn’t wrong, but that was really the basis of the plan, and it looked like some stupid ideas worked. Imogen wanted to say something like “well, you already voted to fail me”, which would be kind of fun and clever, but the agony in her head was still too pronounced for that kind of wordplay.
Also, she couldn’t help but notice that he was still gripping his actual Pact Weapon. She’d done nothing more than disable his duplication.
Fine, then. Plan three. In plan three, she would either disarm him or die in agony, and honestly it might be both. And the best part was, it was very easy and simple! To begin, Imogen charged.
She charged, still holding her blood-drenched sword by the blade, bringing it up diagonally in front of her eyes. One-armed, Gerhard had little choice but to respond with his own attack, attempting to drive her back, stabbing one-handed with the flaming tip of his spear.
Imogen caught the tip in her sword’s guard, allowing it to pass right through the guard ring. If she were holding on to the handle, she might have twisted it from his grasp right there, but her claw-hands simply weren’t well-suited to the task. Worse yet, though he had one arm and she two, the strain of the initiation had eroded her strength, and she wasn’t at all sure she could pull the weapon away from him.
So instead, she guided his thrust towards her own calf. The spear went in easily, and excruciatingly, the fire searing the fat and muscle as it entered. It took all of her remaining will not to pass out from the shock, but she wasn’t quite done. She had suppressed the urge to express the scales on her leg as she led the spear in, but she released that now, causing her skin to swell up, trapping the Pact weapon. Finally, she twisted, her body, leg and sword acting as focal points.
And tore the weapon from the master’s grasp.
The injury was agonizing, but not life-threatening; nevertheless, it was the end of her ability to fight. She could hardly stand.. But she’d noticed that Gerhard had kept himself to roughly her own limitations- he had summoned only one Pact weapon, he had not Danced with the spear, and he had chosen to throw only weak reflections of his weapon, refusing to let it leave his hand. Thus, she intuited, just as she would lose the duel if her hands left her sword, so must he.
In response, the blade in her hands grew hot, then hotter, and burst into a sudden conflagration of sunfire.
”Ahehe.” She giggled, delirious. ”Guess I passed.”
Passed the fuck out, in fact.
~
It would be explained to Imogen later that there were two parts to the initiation- body and spirit. No acolyte who was recommended for initiation was ever a bad fighter, no master was going to send their student to probable death. The purpose of the pre-Trial ‘test’ was, in many ways, a farce. A master would object, even lacking a proper basis, and if the initiate was so blindly obedient that they would simply accept indefinite unfair rejection…
“The purpose of Reaved sunlight” Master Gerhard explained to Imogen as she recovered in the Sanctuary’s infirmary, “Is to burn away lies. I don’t expect acolytes to guess the scheme, but they must understand that the truth is being hidden before they can expose it.”
”...isn’t that what the magic is for?” Talking still hurt, but curiosity could be stronger than pain.
“Yes,” the master responded, taking her question more seriously, “But sunfire is a tool for expressing truth, not for divining it. If you stare into the sun, Imogen Ward, all you get is blinded. The truth which you express is inside yourself, your soul. There is a part of everyone which understands what is right and what is wrong- but that is a skill you must train through exercise, like any other. That is the fire which you have captured in your sword. Now fan it until your blade is righteous as the stars.”
And that was the end of the initiation, though not of Imogen’s time with Master Gerhard, who taught her much about Reaving which was not simply swordplay. But of all the words which Imogen received from each of her masters in the days to come, she never heard any as clear and beautiful as the ones which Master Gerhard gave her right after beating her nearly to death.
