The training was finally over.
Grub and Luthiel sat slumped on a rock at the edge of the clearing as the day died around them. The sky above had begun turning orange and purple as evening settled over the forest. The clearing that had been filled with shouting, impacts, and suffering all day had finally gone quiet. Every muscle in Grub's body throbbed in a slow, synchronized rhythm, as if his entire form had become one giant heartbeat of pain.
"Well that's enough for today."
Morrigan stretched her arms overhead and yawned. She chugged the last of her drink, wiped her beak, and started toward the village. Then she paused at the tree line and winked at Grub.
"You better bring your A-game tomorrow, cutie."
Grub raised a hand weakly. "Wait. Can you heal these aches before you go? My muscles feel like they've been chewed on."
Morrigan shook her head.
"I will tomorrow." She waved her jug lazily over her shoulder. "But a good ache never hurt anybody."
His muscles felt like they had been fed through a meat grinder.
"A good ache?" he repeated.
Morrigan simply laughed and walked away.
"Get some sleep, cutie!"
A few moments later she was gone, swallowed by the trees, leaving the two of them alone in the darkening clearing.
Grub sat in the quiet for a while. Then a question that had been sitting in the back of his mind all day finally pushed its way forward. He turned to Luthiel.
"Hey. What will we do about the Lacerts?"
Luthiel turned to him, Thi's crimson eyes narrowing. "What the hell do you mean, Bug?"
Grub looked down at the Mgbaaka Maara strapped to his wrist. The obsidian band sat there silently, its runes dim beneath the camouflage.
"I mean, if I do manage to succeed tomorrow and Morrigan takes this thing off — won't it alert someone that it's been removed? The signal will die. Surely, they'll know something happened." He flexed his fingers. "What do we do then?"
Luthiel shrugged. "I bet Master has it all worked out, ya dipshit. Just believe in her."
Grub stared at her for a moment. Then he faced the dim sky and a small smile crossed his face.
"Yeah. Maybe I should."
Luthiel got up from the rock and walked over to the tree where her dress was folded. She picked it up, then grabbed Grub's shirt and coat from the grass and tossed them at him. The bundle hit him in the chest.
"Ow."
"Anyways, Bug. You should be more worried about how you're going to win in the first place." She crossed her arms. "Not to say I don't believe in you…"
A small pause.
"Actually, I don't care. I don't believe you will win."
Grub deadpanned at her.
"Master is really strong," Thi continued matter-of-factly, "and forcing her to move is near impossible."
Grub sighed. He'd had the same thought looping in his head all day. He couldn't see a path to victory. He had some semblance of anima reinforcement now, but it was a flickering candle compared to what he would need. And his Forte was bone dry. The familiar blackness wouldn't answer until he killed something again. He turned to Luthiel, who looked about ready to leave.
"Luthiel. What should I know before my match? About Morrigan."
Luthiel stopped mid-step. Then her appearance shifted. The red streaks drained out of her hair as blue ones bled through in their place. Her messy hair smoothed and lengthened, bangs falling over her eyes like a curtain closing. Her posture straightened into perfect stillness.
El turned to face him.
"Ah. So you would like information on Master." Her flat voice carried the faintest trace of approval. "How clever, Scribe."
She tilted her head.
"But are you certain I am allowed to share that information with you before this match? It would be a shame if you were disqualified and lost before getting started.."
Grub shook his head.
"When Morrigan knocked you into a boulder earlier — while we were both fighting her — I asked her about the rules of the match. She said there weren't really any specific ones. Or rather, that they were at her discretion." He shrugged. "I don't think 'no learning about your opponent' is a rule Morrigan would enforce. If anything, she'd probably be disappointed in me if I didn't try."
El considered this for a moment. Then she nodded.
"I suppose that is true. Very well then, Scribe. Let us talk." She walked back over and sat beside him on the moss-covered rock, her folded dress resting in her lap. "I would prefer you not be executed."
"That makes two of us."
El stared at him through her bangs for a moment, then began.
"Master is a woman of many strengths. Many, many strengths. As her maid and humble servant, I can bear witness to all of them." She folded her mitten-like hands. "One such strength is her Mythic-ranked Forte, called Current."
Grub leaned in.
"It allows her to change the flow of movement and force. Any strike, any push, any momentum within her range — she has the ability to redirect it. Attacks aimed at her simply go elsewhere. Force applied to her flows around her like water around a stone. It is a powerful ability that makes her a force to be reckoned with." El paused. "I mean that literally. You cannot reckon with her by force."
Grub's stomach sank slightly. A flow-redirection ability against a ring-out match. This was certainly going to inhibit his ability to move her. How would he be able to take her out?
"However," El continued, "she has weaknesses as well."
Grub's attention sharpened. Now they were getting somewhere.
El held up one mitten hand.
"Her Maladroit is quite costly. It is called Equalization and it works rather simply."
"Her Maladroit forces her Anima reserves down to the perceived strength of her opponent. It also seals her effective rank to that same level."
She turned her hidden gaze toward him.
"So in this match, despite her true strength and rank being that of a Great Sage, you will be fighting an old woman of Dormant rank, Tier Three."
"Because that is what you are."
Grub couldn't help it. A smile spread across his face. That meant he had a chance. He wouldn't be fighting the legend who founded a village and repelled entire armies. He would be fighting his equal. Power for power, Anima for Anima, they would stand on the same ground.
El's flat expression didn't waver. "Do not become overconfident, Scribe."
Grub's smile faded slightly.
"Master is a dangerous woman even when brought down to your level. She may not have the body or the Anima of a Great Sage during your fight. But you must remember something." El's voice slowed, each word placed deliberately. "Her Maladroit has activated against every single opponent she has ever faced who was weaker than her. Which is to say, nearly all of them."
"She has never had an easy fight in her life. Every battle she has ever fought was fought on even ground. Every victory she has ever won was earned through skill alone. Years of fighting opponents who were, by definition, her equals in power, and winning anyway." El tilted her head. "She was beating me — or I suppose, Thi — effortlessly today while presumably equalized to our level. That is because while she may carry the strength of a Dormant in this match, she still carries the experience, the technique, and the control of her true rank."
Her hidden eyes fixed on him.
"To put it plainly, Scribe." El's voice remained flat. "If you attempt to defeat Master through direct combat..."
"You will lose."
Grub nodded slowly. That much had been made abundantly clear over the past several hours, and every lesson that had been delivered directly into his ribs.
"But," El said, raising a single mitten finger, "Master is a kappa."
Grub looked up.
"Kappas are a people who carry very special water in the basin atop their heads. That water contains a small fraction of their Life Anima. If some of it spills, they stutter and slow down." She paused. "If it spills completely, they cease movement altogether and are frozen. For a short period of time."
Grub's mind was already racing, but a concern surfaced first. He frowned.
"Wait. If it contains Life Anima, won't spilling it be detrimental to her? I'm not trying to kill her. I just need to move her."
El shook her head.
"No. The water in the basin can be refilled naturally by their own Anima. It is a temporary state, not a wound. It will not damage her." Her bangs shifted slightly. "Or else I would not have told you about it."
The words carried a quiet complexity. She was helping him fight the person she loved most in the world, and she had drawn her own careful line about how far that help could go.
Grub nodded.
"Alright. Thanks a lot, El. You really gave me everything I'll need for tomorrow."
El nodded once, her expression showing not a flicker of emotion.
"Yes. I would prefer to see you live, so it is my pleasure."
She stood, brushed off her shorts, and tucked her folded dress under one arm. Then she paused and turned back to him. For a moment she said nothing, just stood there with her hidden eyes pointed at him through the dark.
"I hope to find you victorious tomorrow, Scribe."
Then she turned and walked into the trees, her small figure disappearing into the shadows between the trunks.
After watching her go, Grub cracked his knuckles, one at a time, and stretched his throbbing arms above his head. The challenge still felt impossible. But impossible and hopeless were not the same thing.
Morrigan had informed him during training — somewhere between the third and fourth time she had slapped him into a tree — that he had to return to his cell by a specific hour. Until that bracelet came off, he remained a prisoner. The entire training session had been something Morrigan insisted on allowing, bending her own rules the way she had been bending them for him since the day he arrived.
So he couldn't stay out much longer. But before he headed back, he had a few things to do.
He stood, slid his shirt over his aching torso, and pulled the white coat across his shoulders. His mind was already moving — sorting through everything El had told him, everything Maggot had shown him, everything Morrigan had beaten into him over the course of one impossible day.
An old woman who could not be pushed, standing in a circle, equal to him in power and infinitely beyond him in skill. There was a puzzle there. And puzzles were the one battlefield where Grub had never lost.
Yet, he had a lot to do if he intended to win.