Lacerta's fingers clenched around the hilt until his knuckles ached with whiteness. His breath hitched, a ragged, uneven thing, as if his body couldn't decide whether to inhale, to growl, or to scream.
Dardain's words of panic blurred together, meaningless sounds drowned in the ringing in his ears.
Glenn's body was still there. That shouldn't have meant anything. Lacerta had learned early that people died. The strong killed the weak. That was the law of this world—he had always known it.
So why did his chest feel like a raw, gaping wound? Why did he want to break Dardain's jaw, not for strength or pride, but just to make him stop existing?
His pulse thundered in his head. The voice—the one that had always been his immutable compass, humming the law of strength in his mind—should have been calm, cold, absolute. But now, it was a foreign whisper, muffled and lost, as if even it had no answer.
He wanted to say something—you killed him, maybe, or he wasn't weak—but the words wouldn't form. He wasn't even sure he believed them.
Glenn was dead. Glenn had been weaker.
That was the truth. Wasn't it?
Then why did it hurt to think it?
He hated this feeling. Hated that it made him feel small, insignificant. Hated that it made him hesitate.
The Strong devour the Weak—that was supposed to be a simple truth. It wasn't supposed to hurt... like this.
His sword hand trembled once, just once, before he forced it still. His eyes stayed locked on Dardain, but the raw fury was hardening, calcifying into something infinitely colder. A chilling stillness that drowned out the confusion. Even as his mind buckled, the words spilled from his lips, low and final.
Lacerta: ["You shouldn't have done that."]
All he knew was that something within him craved Dardain's absence—not as an enemy to be vanquished, but as a blight to be scoured from existence. At any cost.
He didn't know if it was right or wrong.
He didn't care.
————————————————————————————
Dardain gritted his teeth, though whether from the searing pain of the slash or the abject panic of being wounded before his acolytes, his followers, he couldn't say.
But they had all seen it.
His vulnerability, laid bare for all to witness. They were never meant to see such frailty; they were supposed to look upon him and behold a divine, inviolable force.
In that moment, the fragile illusion shattered. For all his posturing as the prophet of 'The Feast,' for all his sermons on Vollachia's creed—that the Strong rule over the Weak—Vola Dardain was a fraud.
Pitiful. A man-child grasping for a reverence he had not earned.
Wiping a crimson smear from his cheek with the back of his hand, Dardain spun on the crowd, his voice a panicked shriek.
Dardain: ["Get him! Attack him! You imbeciles, what are you waiting for?!"]
He could only watch as his followers merely glanced at one another, their faces etched not with loyalty, but with profound confusion. Why should they attack? By the very tenets he preached as gospel, they were the weak, and they had no place intervening in a battle between the strong.
A cold voice cleaved the silence.
Lacerta: ["It seems.... I overestimated you."]
The moment Lacerta spoke those words, he was already mid-dash. Dardain's attention snapped back to his young assailant, the man's own sword poised to defend.
Dardain: ["—Dona!!"]
Lacerta's eyes furrowed at the baffling incantation. Unsure of its meaning—or if it possessed one at all—he stll pressed his assault and swung for Dardain's neck, but his blade never connected.
A concussive blow to his stomach cut the arc short, hurling him backward to skid across the platform.
What is that...?
Before his eyes stood a stone pillar, erupted from the very ground. It had struck him, and now it stood motionless. Of course there were abilities, 'techniques,' he knew nothing about... Lacerta wasn't in denial, nor a fool. His memories remained a nebulous haze, his combat experience tragically deficient compared to this man.
But still...
Dardain: ["Stunned, are we?! That's just the beginning of your torment, BRAT!!"]
The leviathan charged, his thundering footsteps a clear harbinger of his attack. Dardain swung the colossal scimitar downward and Lacerta darted sideways, the ponderous blade missing him by a breath as its razor edge sundered the stone.
THUNK—!
Driving his foot onto the flat of the weapon to pin it, Lacerta's grip on his katana tightened as he swung again for Dardain's neck.
Lacerta: ["——Huh?!"]
He had learned this counter from Haldran—a flawless technique to immobilize an opponent for an extra moment. It had worked on the assassins...
However, Dardain's power was in a different echelon entirely.
With nothing more than sheer, brute strength, he ripped the scimitar from the ground, sending Lacerta hurtling meters into the air. In an instant, Dardain intercepted the boy's descent with a ferocious lunge, following with a horizontal slash of his great blade.
Lacerta met it with his katana once more, wincing from the impact and straining against the overwhelming force until his slight frame was sent skidding sideways before he found his footing and drifted into a low stance.
If that won't work anymore...
He darted forward with an explosive surge of speed, pirouetting around the arc of Dardain's colossal scimitar as it crashed down toward him. His body became a gyre of motion in that instant, flipping upside-down mid-air until he was looking over Dardain's own shoulder.
—What about this!?
His katana became a blur, the spinning maneuver carving into Dardain's right shoulder and opening a deep gash.
As Lacerta landed, he winced, his eyes narrowing.
Because he saw it. Dardain had reacted at the last possible second. The blow should have incapacitated his sword arm, but the gash was far shallower than Lacerta had anticipated.
As much as I loathe to admit it... he's formidable.
Dardain's expression curdled. Seeing the blood dripping onto his own shoulder, a volatile concoction of fear and rage twisted his features. It was as if he didn't register the wound itself, only what it signified: failure before his audience, his disciples.
If this continues, I won't have any left...
None...!!
Dardain: ["I CANNOT ALLOW IT! I WILL NOT ALLOW IT! I AM ONE OF THE FEW CHOSEN BY THE WORLD ITSELF! YOU, CHILD, COULD NOT POSSIBLY COMPREHEND THE MAGNITUDE OF MY DIVINITY, MY RADIANCE!"]
As Dardain roared, his pupils constricted to pinpricks, the sclera of his eyes flooding with crimson. And in that moment of unbridled fury, Lacerta saw them.
The eerie, crimson glow of Dardain's pupils.
What did they mean? Some new ability he didn't understand? That was the most likely conclusion.
He had seen them first when Dardain killed Glenn...
Meaning... something changes when his eyes are red.
Lacerta was about to find out.
STEP—!
The moment Lacerta's foot struck the ground, Dardain surged forth. Lacerta followed suit, and they met in the epicenter of a rapidly splintering crater, a seismic clash of katana against scimitar.
Dardain: ["THE WORLD BLESSED ME—AND ME ALONE!"]
In the center of the fractured crater, Dardain roared.
A torrent of sparks erupted as metal shrieked against metal through the grand hall. Lacerta's ground his feet and gritted his teeth as he fought against it, but his arm quaked under the phenomenal force.
Lacerta: ["Just shut... the hell... up!"]
It wasn't a massive difference from their last exchange, but he could tell—this time, it was different...
Dardain had become stronger. Faster.
A brutal kick sent Lacerta blasting backward, a spray of blood erupting from his lips.
A concussive gale ripped through his entire frame, the force launching him from the platform and into a distant wall of the grand hall. His spine slammed against the stone, but he rebounded from the impact, dropping low into a sudden split to evade a diagonal slash that would have eviscerated him.
The scimitar tore through the stone pillar as if it were parched earth, sending it toppling toward them before the two diverged, narrowly evading its crushing descent.
Vaulting over the toppling pillar, Lacerta brought his katana around in a powerful arc to cleave through the dust-choked haze. The sheer force of the swing sent a blade of wind screaming toward Dardain, which smashed against his scimitar and sent the hulking man skidding backward before he caught himself with a snarl.
Dardain: ["That feisty man... he was weak... but within my body, what he once was becomes my source of power! Now, GROVEL IN DESPAIR—GOA!"]
Fire coalesced in his open palm, a pulsating orb that shone brighter than any torch could hope to. He slammed the incandescent sphere against his scimitar, pushing with extreme force.
—That combination... whatever this power is, it is exceedingly dangerous.
The scimitar was now wreathed in roaring flames.
How does that work? What even is this? Every time he utters those strange words, the impossible manifests before my very eyes.
Regardless, it was clear the true battle had only just begun.