[Skell]
Niles stabbed a thumb to the ground. "I'll tell you 'bout the view from the top, mate!"
I dragged mine across my neck. "Like I'd let you take my turf! All you'll see is stars!"
He crouched.
I poised.
Competition electrified the air around us - galvanizing the metal fringes of our trusted weapons. Then?
They collided. Stone-shattering staff against bone-bisecting blade. Again we exerted ourselves to overpower the other's strength. Difference was, I was winning. Exhaustion piled on Niles in both body and mind.
But not by as much as I'd hoped.
A smirk unfurled across his face as the shortsword pressed closer to his side. Thrumming energy coursed through his weapon into mine and up, reaching so far as to vibrate my teeth.
That stance!
"Whirligig!" he incanted.
Wild razor-sharp rotations ripped just over my face as I bent backwards. His power art would've lopped off my tongue if I'd stuck it out. Though I remembered more than the art's stance.
Niles' blurred spinning winded down; I jolted back up. Like last time, an unfocused dizziness plastered his very vulnerable face.
Two eyefuls of staff knocked sense into Niles, and knocked Niles back across the tiles. His dark-orange ward slammed against the stage - matching what the briars reduced mine to - before climbing quick to his feet. I didn't press the attack.
"How's your head?" I asked.
"Worried 'bout your own competition, mate?" He whistled, amused. "Mana headache's fading. Dizziness' on the way out, too."
"Good," I jutted my staff. "So don't blabber any excuses when you lose!"
"Ha!" Niles took up his classic reverse-grip. "That's my line!"
Wicked speed belted the swordsman at me - seeming almost faster than before, like a beast heightened by their death throes. I pushed myself to match him, doubting for a moment if I could. And yet… I did.
Staff whizzed past his cheek; Niles twisted to hack into me but I blocked with one staff-end and swung with the other which he weaved past to impale me in the spine. I whipped around to block it, he stabbed and I beat it aside and he stabbed again and I did the same - faster - faster - faster than thought, quicker than instinct. Something else fueled our breakneck pace to steal the upper hand:
Competition.
I didn't shiver with fear - not even with potential defeat looming over my head like a hanging guillotine. No… I shivered with excitement.
Permanent smiles slashed our faces as we stepped around each other to break through our peer's guard. We swung. We blocked. We missed. We were far from perfect fighters. But we fought to our fullest. Fought to prove our power. Fought to be the other's better.
This was the duel that dominated our minds since the Hardlight Arena. Scaling that tree in the Sun-bleached Prairie, ascending the Tower of Stone - all of it led to this:
The battle for the highest spot in all the Kingdom of Lumerit.
I thrust through a rapidly fleeting opening to score Niles in the gut. That didn't slow his blade one bit, clipping my outer thigh. Space separated us as we pushed each other away. Only then did I notice how close we'd come to the stage's edge… and to the destruction of our wards.
Niles glanced down to his red ward, to mine, then to the plummet several feet beside us. "Never thought you'd be this good. Every attack I throw gets harder to land than the last."
"I'm against you, after all." I copied his panting. "Either I lose or improve - sink or swim. Don't think I haven't noticed you doing the same."
He laughed. "Got me! But… we've yapped enough, Purple. This? This next moment is what it all comes down to."
"I know. Two ambitions can't make it off this stage. I… I wish you the best."
"I do too, mate. No regrets, all right?"
I mastered myself. "None."
We shared one last friendly smile. Then somber necessity sharpened our expressions.
Niles readied his sword.
And I, my staff.
Next came footsteps. Adamant roars. The screech of steel sieging steel.
Consistent clanging tuned the song of our final violent dance. But, Abyss, I screwed up. My eyes pinned so closely to the making of metallic music that it missed out on the ground underneath us.
Niles ducked under a swing and didn't rise back up. A moment after and my legs slipped from beneath me and my world slammed into the tiles. His blade wasn't the culprit; it never left my sight. Instead it was a sweep from his leg. Both our wards screeched and balanced over outright obliteration at the maneuver. But that was the sort of risky play needed to steal the advantage. And as he shot up over me…
I laid on the chopping block of an executioner's blade.
He reared back to skewer me. Every screaming bone in my body rushed to thrust off the ground and roll away. Sheer inches separated steel from ward as it plunged into the stage.
I tried to spring back up - almost falling in the process. Nothing solid was under my back foot. Just empty air.
Niles didn't let me recover. I lurched forward and barely brought up a knee to stabilize myself before a brash blade crashed down on my head.
My staff intervened. But the incoming weight quaked through its surface to rattle my bones.
Strike after sparking strike rained on my guard like a meteor shower. There wasn't time to counter or slip by - I was cornered and Niles refused to let up. Whatever embers of energy he had left raged into one final decisive effort. A fleeting opportunity passed through my mind:
Just hold on! Outlast him! Leverage undeath!
I quickly adopted the plan. 'Til I started getting forced back.
What's going on!? I feel… weaker!
The realization hit me like a brick: my Shroud was reaching its limit after spending so long driven to its fullest.
Abyss! Not now!
Pebbles plummeted off the stage's edge - brushed off by my sliding heel. Niles might've been submerged in exhaustion, but the grip on my Shroud loosened at an equal pace. We should've been dead even, then. But what broke the deadlock pulsed in Niles' veins and eyes: that same burst of human will Penelle had. The rush of unbound strength only available in times of absolute necessity. I remembered it from my past life. But I couldn't call on it with an undead body.
One last hack angled my spine over the edge as Niles' primal roars echoed over me. He lost the energy to keep slashing and resorted to throwing his body into his sword 'til I was pushed offstage. It was working.
The world blurred as cold defeat clenched around my throat and tried to drag me under. There was no help this time. No advice from a past life. No lucky breaks.
But… Abyss… I can't lose!
Flashes of fresh memory ripped through my mind like a series of hot knives. The promises I made, the tribulations I overcame, the raw desire to one day, simply… live life. My life.
I summoned everything and more, gripping and pulling and refusing to falter. Yet I still wasn't flesh and blood - willpower alone wouldn't make the difference.
But it did thrust me toward the one option left.
"Hand of Decay!"
I pressed the back of my wrist into the staff as necrotic power ignited in my palm - momentarily shocking Niles. But there hadn't been time to figure how I'd use it. Holding the staff without dusting it made bracing even harder.
And when that thought passed - a blink in time before Niles exerted one last push - my body moved instinctively.
Niles put all of himself into this. Like always.
That'd be his downfall.
My hands adjusted quickly. Right after, my Shroud faded. So did my strength. But by then the job was done. The staff had been an enduring weapon throughout the Ordeals… but even it couldn't last long in the clutches of my art. Its center eroded to dust.
In the exact spot Niles thrust into.
Nothing held back his momentum; the man and his sword flung themselves through the opening and over my shoulder like a tightly coiled spring - finally unleashed.
I watched him soar over and behind me while wearing my slimiest smirk. It fell like the rest of me when he clutched my ankle mid-air and snatched me down with him.
Sh-shade!
Our fall was chaotic and short. But there was no pain at the bottom. My ward's noble sacrifice made sure of that - shattering at long last. Granted, Niles' spine did its due diligence too.
Under me laid the swordsman, chest to the dirt floor, his own ward dissipating into the same cloud of red flecks as mine.
Dots connected. I rolled off Niles and sluggishly up to my feet as the last few seconds sunk in.
That's… that it then. It's over. Though, our wards can't decide the winner - their shattering just happened because we fell out of bounds.
But, does that mean…?
"D-did I win!?" I moreso asked the world than any particular person. My question rose to a ring of speechless, stunned, aghast faces. It didn't go unanswered.
"You landed on me." Niles tugged my attention back to the two of us as he picked himself off the ground, popping a crick in his back. "Not the other way around. Means… I was the first to touch the ground."
He smiled. A bittersweet thing, microcosmic of a face that'd just as quickly drop a dejected tear from one eye as a proud tear from the other. Though he wasn't the type to bawl after a loss. Instead he collected himself, tossing a congratulatory glove on my shoulder. "No if's, and's, wait's, hold on's, or even but's about it. This win's yours, Purple."
Chills always came to mind as a bad thing. Dark premonitions before pain or depressing consequence. But now? Never had they felt stronger. Never had they felt good.
"Ha. Ha ha." I pressed a hand to my chest, right around where my heart should've been. For a second, I could've sworn I felt a beat. "I… pulled it off. I actually made it!"
Amara! Oliver! Cynthine! Everyone! I'm finally a Templar!
Niles' arm draped around my shoulders. "Canny move, at the end there. Real shame about your staff though," he pointed to the two halves of dusty metal lying in the dirt.
"Oh, right."
Any other time, I'd be as devastated as my staff. It was my blade and my shield; I couldn't stand where I stood without it. That said, even its loss couldn't put a downpour on my mood.
"Well," I shrugged, "guess I'll learn to dual-wield or something!"
Niles laughed. "No need, mate. Repair costs might as well be a drop in the bucket for you now. Don't forget, you're a-"
The booming rumble of sabatons on stone shook us from conversation. Victorious atmosphere warped instantly.
A long shadow swallowed Niles and I whole. Karthwyn's - the Commandant half-veiled in kicked-up dust. "Never, not in ten thousand suns and moons, shall I ever induct you into my Order!" Crimson-faced thunder echoed from his lips as he squeezed his gauntlet so hard it shrieked. "Heinous child! You have only wormed this far through dirty tricks, underhandedness, and… and luck! Simply blind, profane luck!"
My bones seized. Not because of any art, but because of the sheer, arresting aura of rage exuding from the Commandant. He stomped toward me, eyes likely picturing me contorted into every painful shape imaginable.
And yet I broke out of his mold. I'd long since decided that my fate was no one else's to decide. Not even by one of the most powerful men in the nation.
"No!" I countered. "I beat your rules, I won your game. I'm already in your Order!"
"Skell won fair and square!" Niles rushed to stand by my side. "So get outta his way already!"
Eyeglass lenses threatened to snap apart under Karthwyn's wrinkled glare. "Silence! You are as much a taint on my Order as he!"
More sabatons hit the ground - Merriline and Valérie - arriving in the narrow space between us.
"Move, imbeciles!" Karthwyn stopped. "Or do you wish to be relocated to the absolute worst station you can think of?"
"C-Commandant Karthwyn," Valérie forced out, her chiseled cheeks wearing an uncharacteristic apprehension, "with all due respect, this goes against the instructions we were given - all of this."
Merriline struggled to hold eye contact, before mustering all her bravery. "S-she's right! We all saw what happened. Niles fell first. According to the rules, that means-"
"Begone with the rules!" Karthwyn trembled the very foundations of the facility. "I will induct no dark mages into my Order and that is where the matter ends! Not this purple-haired fraudster, nor this jester in red! Understand!? I alone am the highest authority in this sunforsaken chamber! Thus my verdict is writ in stone-"
"Salutations, young lads and lasses!" a voice like strummed strings on a silver lute bellowed above - edged with a profound valiance. "Please, pardon my asking, but are there any Templars here? I rather expected to at least find Karthy by now."
"Who's that?" Niles turned to me, as if I knew any more than he did.
Though while we didn't, Karthwyn sure did. Tight wrinkles slacked and his dagger-thin eyes sprung wide like he was caught with two hands in the cookie jar. I could almost see his heart pounding through his armor as his gaze beamed high. I followed their direction.
A bomb went off inside Merriline, bursting her into excited giggles. "Oh! Oh it's him!" she hopped up and down. "Val - didja hear!?
Valérie brought in a deep breath, then permitted herself a small smile. Though really, it struck me as more of a smirk.
"Th-the Templars? They're down there," Ryzza's voice wisped from the upper floor.
"Ah! Many thanks, kind lass!" said the mystery man. Then, a sparkling gauntlet latched onto the railing. In one graceful, fluid motion, a figure leapt over, diving like a shooting star.
Waves of pure gold flit behind him - waist-length locks shining in the overhead radiance. Rose-pink plate armor glittered bright, regal, and mantled by the lion and eagle like Karthwyn's… except this man had something more: a cape of the whitest whites, silky in its transparency. His rapidly approaching face was that of a sculptor's dream - or nightmare, maybe, of an unreachable artistic ideal. Jagged, but disarming. Smooth, but etched with thousands of battles. Extremely androgynous. And extremely close.
Greaves touched down with a softness contradicting his speed. All eyes were on him.
"Sun above! Sunny sun above" Merriline clapped her hands musically. "It's the hero of the Templars! The Golden Prodigy! The… the…"
"Lionheart," Karthwyn grimaced, pale as paper. "Judge Lucival Ridefort."