Chapter 21: Blood and Geometry
Garrett moved like someone trying to remember who they used to be, blade work precise but lacking the essence-enhanced fluidity that had once made it dangerous. Orin blocked the opening strike, felt the impact shiver up his arm, Richard's stolen muscle memory doing the work his conscious mind couldn't process fast enough.
They circled each other, both calculating. The crowd noise had faded into white static, irrelevant backdrop to the immediate geometry of not dying.
"You're afraid." Garrett's voice was steady despite the blade trembling in his grip. "I can see it. You're terrified you'll have to drain me again, prove to everyone what you really are."
"I'm terrified I'll have to embarrass you twice." The lie came easy. Truth was he was absolutely fucking terrified, just not of the things Garrett assumed.
Garrett lunged, blade targeting center mass. Orin twisted, Vera's knife work bleeding through, redirected the strike and countered at Garrett's exposed shoulder. Connected. First blood, technically, though barely enough to stain fabric.
The crowd's roar registered distantly. Orin pressed forward, using the opening, Lyra's midnight lessons about closing distance and exploiting a strength advantage. His blade came in low, aiming for Garrett's weak right side.
Garrett blocked but the impact staggered him, depleted attributes struggling against Orin's sixty-four strength. For a moment, something like fear crossed his face. The recognition that his training might not matter against someone who'd rewritten their fundamental biology.
"You stole six years of my life." Garrett's voice cracked around the edges. "My father spent a fortune on my cultivation. Essence extracts, private instructors, everything to make me worthy of our family name. You destroyed it in three minutes."
"Your family bought you power. I had to steal mine. Not sure either is honorable."
"Theft isn't honor. It's just dressed-up cowardice." Garrett attacked with renewed fury, blade work getting sloppy as emotion compromised technique. Exactly what Lyra had warned would happen to someone fighting for validation instead of survival.
Orin dodged, sidestepped, let Garrett's momentum carry him past. Brought his pommel down on Garrett's sword wrist, not enough to break but enough to hurt. The blade clattered to the ground.
Silence from the crowd. This was it. Garrett was disarmed, vulnerable, the duel effectively over. Orin could end it clean, accept the victory, walk away with whatever credibility that purchased.
Garrett dove for his sword, fingers scrabbling against dirt. Desperate. Humiliated. Everything about him screaming that losing to a blackstone was worse than death, that his entire identity had been built on inherited superiority and watching it crumble was unbearable.
*He's already broken. Finishing this just destroys him completely in front of everyone he knows.*
Orin stepped back, lowered his blade. "Pick it up."
The crowd's confusion was audible, muttering spreading like contagion. Garrett stared at him, not understanding.
"What?"
"Pick up your sword. We're not done." Orin kept his voice level, aware Varen was watching with narrowed eyes, calculating what this meant. "You wanted a rematch to prove the equipment shed was an lambush. Prove it. Fight me at your best instead of scrambling in the dirt."
Garrett grabbed his sword, stood slowly. His expression had shifted from rage to something more complicated, confusion bleeding into what might have been respect or might have been a deeper hatred. Hard to tell when someone's entire worldview was collapsing.
They reset positions. This time Garrett attacked with control, technique reasserting itself over emotion. Better. Cleaner. The fight he'd wanted to have before desperation made him sloppy.
They traded strikes for maybe thirty seconds, both breathing hard, both feeling the limits of their different advantages. Garrett's training versus Orin's stolen attributes, formal dueling versus improvised survival instinct.
Then Garrett overextended, just slightly. Muscle memory from when he'd had essence enhancement betraying him, making him commit to attacks his current body couldn't sustain. Orin saw the opening, Lyra's lessons crystallizing into action. He stepped inside Garrett's guard, used his shoulder to throw off the blade angle, brought his pommel up into Garrett's solar plexus.
The air left Garrett's lungs in an undignified wheeze. He folded, training trying to compensate but physics having final say. Orin swept his legs, put him on the ground, blade at his throat.
"Yield."
Garrett stared up at him, chest heaving, something broken and raw in his eyes. For a moment Orin thought he'd refuse, make them drag this out until someone actually got hurt. Then the fight drained out of him like water from cracked vessel.
"I... yield."
Varen's voice cut through the crowd noise. "Match concluded. Winner, Fox."
Orin stepped back, offered his hand to help Garrett up. Garrett stared at it like it might be poisoned, then accepted. Let himself be pulled to his feet, both of them standing there breathing hard while five hundred students processed what they'd witnessed.
"You let me recover." Garrett's voice was quiet, meant only for them. "Why?"
"Because beating you while you were scrambling for your weapon would've proved I was stronger. Beating you at your best proves you're not as insurmountable as you thought." Orin released his hand. "The hierarchy's built on people like you believing you're inherently superior. Turns out you're just well trained. Training can be matched."
"That's not comfort."
"It's not meant to be. It's just the
truth." Orin turned to leave, paused. "Your essence will regenerate. Might take months, might take years, but birthstones recover from depletion, I can see yours has already recovered a little. You're not permanently broken. Just temporarily humbled."
He walked away before Garrett could respond, before the implications of public victory could settle into his bones. The blackstones were cheering, Maya, Selphie and the others from midnight gatherings treating this like revolution's opening salvo. The green-stones looked complicated, varying expressions of respect, concern and calculation.
Lyra intercepted him at the circle's edge, ice-blue eyes scanning him for damage. "You're intact."
"Our little training session paid off."
"I prefer to call it aggressive instruction." She kept pace with him as he walked toward the main building, away from crowds and celebration and the weight of being symbolic. "You let him recover his weapon. That was tactically stupid."
"It was psychologically necessary. Beating him while he was scrambling would've made me look predatory, like a monster. Beating him at his best makes me look skilled, like I have humility and empathy."
"You're learning politics. That's disturbing." They reached a quiet corridor, empty of students who were all still processing the spectacle. Lyra grabbed his arm, pulled him into an alcove. "That was good. Really good. You controlled the fight, controlled the narrative, didn't give them ammunition to call you a monster."
"I don't feel like I controlled anything. I feel like I stumbled through choreography I barely understood."
"That's life. Stumbling through choreography and hoping nobody notices you're improvising." She was standing close, closer than necessary, her breath visible in the alcove's cold. "You proved something today. To them, to yourself. That climbing's possible even when everything's designed to push you down."
"I proved I can beat one depleted green-stone in controlled conditions. That's hardly a revolution."
"It's precedent. That's how revolutions start." Her hand was still on his arm, contact that had stopped being tactical and become something else. "You're doing better than you know, Fox. The void stone's changing you, yes. Making you composite of everyone you've consumed. But you're still choosing how to use that power. Still deciding what kind of person the collection becomes."
"What if I don't like the person I'm becoming?"
"Then you change. Adaptation isn't just physical. It's choosing which traits you keep and which you discard." She pulled back slightly, reestablishing professional distance. "Though for what it's worth, the person you're becoming is interesting. Complicated. Worth knowing."
"That's the nicest thing you've said to me that wasn't wrapped in insult."
"Don't get used to it. I have a reputation to maintain."
Footsteps approached, multiple sets, with a purposeful cadence. They separated, assuming positions that suggested they'd been having a tactical discussion instead of whatever the fuck that had been.
Maya appeared with Selphie and Marcus, all of them carrying expressions that ranged from elation to concern. Behind them, a dozen blackstones and blue-stones, the midnight gathering contingent who'd decided Orin's survival was their business.
"That was beautiful." Maya's grin was feral. "You dismantled him. Proved that training beats birthright in a fair fight."
"It wasn't fair. I've got stolen attributes he doesn't."
"So? Green-stones have inherited advantages we don't. You just evened the mathematics." Selphie stepped forward, purple eyes intense. "You know what this means, right? Every blackstone who watched you win is going to believe climbing's possible. They'll try. Some will fail, probably most, but some won't. You've started something."
"I didn't start anything. I just refused to lose a fight I couldn't afford to lose."
"That's what starting something looks like from the inside." Marcus's voice carried weight, literal and figurative. "My father spent twenty years working manual labor, blue-stone enhancement making him valuable machinery. Died at forty-three, body worn to nothing. You know what he told me before he died? 'Don't fight the system. It's bigger than you and it always wins.' That's what they teach us. That resistance is just slow suicide."
"And?"
"And you're proving him wrong. Proving that fighting back isn't suicide, it's the only way to stay alive that matters." Marcus extended his hand, formal gesture. "Thank you. For showing us it's possible."
Orin took his hand, felt the calluses from years of compensating for blue-stone limitations, the strength built through effort instead of inheritance. Around them, the other students were nodding, agreement spreading through the group like they'd just witnessed religious experience instead of formal combat.
"We're having another gathering." Maya's voice carried quiet determination. "Tomorrow night, same location. More people want to join, blackstones and blue-stones from across the academy. They want to learn what you're teaching, want to believe their birthstones don't determine everything."
"I'm not teaching revolution. I'm just sharing circulation techniques."
"Circulation techniques are revolution when the system's built on restricting knowledge." Selphie glanced at Lyra, calculation evident. "Ashmont's been helping you. Training you, supporting you publicly. That's a risk for green-stone nobility."
"That's investment in outcomes that benefit everyone." Lyra's voice had returned to its aristocratic coolness. "The birthstone hierarchy is inefficient, wastes potential, maintains power through artificial scarcity. Disrupting that serves my interests and yours. Don't confuse alliance with altruism."
"I'm not confused. I'm grateful." Selphie's expression suggested she was cataloging Lyra for future reference, filing her under useful variables. "You're welcome at gatherings. Knowledge from twelve years of family technique would be valuable."
"I'll consider it." Lyra's tone made it clear consideration was a diplomatic lie, but her eyes suggested she might actually show up. "Now disperse before instructors notice you're clustering around the blackstone who just beat their green-stone in public. Optics matter."
The group dissolved, students drifting toward their respective hierarchies and obligations. Lyra lingered, studying Orin with an expression that suggested she was solving equations he couldn't see.
"You're exhausted. Go rest before someone else decides you need to prove something."
"I can't rest. Too much on mind about what happens next."
"What happens next is you continue existing, continue climbing, continue being a precedent for people who need precedent." She adjusted his collar, gesture that had become habit, small intimacy disguised as practical concern. "Also you owe me an extremely expensive dinner that you can't afford. I'm keeping a detailed accounting."
"My debt to you is already incalculable."
"Good. Debt means you're invested in survival, which aligns our interests." But she smiled, brief warmth through winter architecture. "Now go. Before I remember I'm supposed to maintain distance from anomalies who disrupt comfortable hierarchies."
She left him standing in the alcove, descended toward north wing luxury and her exemplary solitude. Orin continued to his basement cell, passing students who looked at him differently now, blackstones with hope, green-stones with calculation and blue-stones with something approaching respect.
His cell was exactly as he'd left it: cold stone, narrow cot, possessions that fit on the desk surface. But it felt different somehow, like the space had absorbed the day's events and was trying to figure out what they meant.
He collapsed on the cot, let exhaustion have its way. His muscles ached despite essence-enhanced recovery. The void stone pulsed against his palm, satisfied but hungry, always hungry.
*Sixty-four strength. Fifty-three durability. I beat a depleted green-stone in controlled conditions.. one victory at a time I guess.*
The math was modest, an accomplishment that probably didn't justify the weight everyone was attaching to it. But math was just math. Meaning was what people made it, stories they told that proved or disproved their worldview.
He'd become a story now, a narrative that blackstones used to believe climbing was possible. That was heavier than any attribute increase, more complicated than any stolen technique. Stories had momentum, spread through populations like disease or hope depending on who was telling and who was listening.
Sleep found him eventually, dragged him under despite the implications trying to keep him conscious. He dreamed of stairs, endless climbing toward an altitude that never arrived, each step taking him higher while the ground kept finding new ways to be below him.
When he woke, evening had arrived. His body felt somewhat restored, muscles having processed the day's abuse into memory. He sat up, found a note shoved under his door.
*Tomorrow night. Midnight. Same place. Forty people confirmed. Bring whatever wisdom theft has taught you. We're building something here and you're the uncomfortable cornerstone.
Also Lyra says you're buying her dinner next week. She's keeping receipts.
- M*
Orin folded the note and pocketed it. Forty people. Double yesterday's gathering. The story was spreading, a narrative about a blackstone who climbed finding an audience among people who'd spent their lives being told climbing was a genetic impossibility.
*Don't become just the story. Remember you're still a person underneath all the noise.*
He pulled out the remaining essence vials, grade-four materials that could push him higher, make him stronger, confirm he was ascending instead of just accumulating weight.
Outside, the memorial garden held its vigil, planting failures and calling it remembrance.
Above, Lyra probably sat in her room, practicing ice circulation in solitude, loneliness wearing excellence as armor against any connection.
Across the academy, Maya, Selphie, Marcus and forty others prepared for midnight, gathering in darkness to believe that resistance was possible when someone had proved it first.
And in his cell, Orin Fox fed the void, climbed higher, and hoped that the altitude would mean something beyond just distance from the ground that waited to meet him.