“The promises we make are such curious things. Even when we do not keep them, they can reveal so much of who we are and what we truly value.”

– Xindir Harshek Doxle of the First Flame as the first lines of his third wedding vows.

Jalaren, it turned out, was a bit of a showman. I’m guessing it was how he kept himself amused with his job enough that he didn’t start each day by magically shot putting a half dozen or so students over the Academy’s wall on general principal.

“Sir Reldin, do you make any demands or offer any concessions to the Accused?” he asked.

“Yes. I offer her the chance to change her plea. Should she admit to her guilt here and now, the Empress will be content with her expulsion from this Academy and final sentencing by the High Council,” Reldin said.

There was an odd reverberation in his voice. It was subtle, and I couldn’t place what was responsible but it seemed a safe bet that it was related to the suit of full plate armor he was wearing.

Grammy had always laughed at ‘Knights’ and their obsession with encasing themselves in giant cans of metal. On horseback, the armor wasn’t as much of an issue, but for foot fighting like this, she’d always insisted it was more of a hindrance than a help. I’d asked her why they didn’t use magic to make it light and fast and strong enough to provide protection against fireballs and things like that. Her answer had been that they did, but that it was still more of an affectation than a worthwhile tool. According to her, there were magics which could render a duelist’s skin stronger than the strongest steel and even the best armor always had weaknesses that an experienced duelist could exploit.

I’d believed her when she’d said that and imagined myself nimbly fighting a garrison of clumsy Knights who would be trapped waddling around in their steel suits while I danced from one to other laying them low with perfect disabling shots. 

Watching a real Knight prepare for battle though showed me how wrong I’d been and left me questioning Grammy’s wisdom in general.

Reldin wasn’t slow or clumsy in his movements. He was a wall of steel and blades ready to spring the moment Jalaren released them. I looked for the weaknesses and clever openings Grammy had insisted would be there and I saw several. The slit in his visor, a reverse thrust along his arm into his gauntlet, the hinge at his knee. Each one a potential liability and each one he was certainly aware of and definitely capable of defending.

“Idrina Ironbriar, how do you answer this offer?” Jalaren asked.

“The terms are an insult and I rejected them as such,” Idrina said. “I will extend an offer to the Accuser though, admit that the charges presented are lies and slander, swear yourself to my service for a year and a day and the Gold Phalanx may have you back when I am done with you. Otherwise only the crows and the worms will have any use for you.”

“The Accused cannot make offers to the Prosecution,” Jalaren said.

“The enemies of the Empire shall ever fall,” Reldin said, unsheathing his sword in what looked like more than a little irritation.

“Indeed they shall,” Indrina said, conjuring a single spear to her hands with a note of grim delight in her voice.

For as eager as the two of them were to start killing one another though, Jalaren wasn’t quite ready to let proceedings begin.

“As the Empress watches over us all, we take this moment to entreat that her favor be granted to the one who champions the righteous decision in the matter to be put to the blade,” he said. “It is in her name that justice shall be done and for her glory that virtue shall be redeemed. Let no one doubt that it is her divine hand which binds the fate of these two and her unquestionable holy wisdom which delivers the victor into the grace of her realm, with no taint or feud arising from their actions herein.”

As prayers went it felt a bit wobbly to me. If the Empress could see all and decide how the fight was going to turn out why would anyone need to entreat her favor? For that matter if the Empress had any power at all why would this trial ever have been necessary? Saying that ‘the result is the Empresses’ fault’ implies that the crime was the Empresses fault too.

Or at least it did to me. I suspected if I tried to advance that particular line of reasoning in the wrong places I’d probably get myself burned at the stake.

“Knight Reldin, do you stand ready, sworn in body, mind, and soul to uphold the honor the Empress Eternal and the Empire she preserves for us?” Jalaren asked.

“I do,” Reldin said, but his whole attention was on Idrina.

Idrina who was wearing no armor.

Idrina who was half a foot shorter than him.

Idrina who was only armed with a normal spear where he was carrying…my eyes finally locked onto the blade Reldin was carrying. 

It wasn’t a normal sword.

I couldn’t tell how I knew that, not at first, but even just seeing his blade made my skin itch.

“Irdina Ironbriar, do you stand ready, your fate bound to your sworn word to redeem your honor in the eyes of the Empress Eternal and the Empire she preserves for us?” Jalaran asked.

“I am ready to defend my honor with my life, but it needs no redemption as the lies before me tarnish it not and never shall,” she said.

“I declare that you are both joined in holy purpose and on my mark, shall the Empress’s will be done. Lay on!”

The two of them needed no further encouragement.

There was a burst of golden light from Idrina’s feet and the bang of an explosion from within Reldin’s armor, both of which propelled the combatants to the center of the ring where they met with enough force to blow the front row of spectators three feet back.

Well, most of the spectators. Narla didn’t move because she was Narla and Ilyan didn’t move because he was used to Idrina’s fighting style.

The two fighters spent a moment in the center of the arena, sword blade locked against spear haft. Reldin had the advantage in height and strength in that contest but I watched him surge forward, trying to drive Idrina back (presumably into the scorching silver flames) only to fail to move her more an inch.

At first that didn’t make sense. Had Idrina been hiding strength related magic from me in our fights? Then I noticed the gold light beneath her feet hadn’t vanished like it normally did. In fact a circuit of it went up her pant legs and emerged from her sleeves to reinforce her grip on the spear.

Reldin grunted and pushed harder, clearly seeking to shatter not only her body but also her magic in one go. That didn’t seem practical until I noticed that small runes on his armor which flared to life as he brought his might to bear on Idrina.

The sound of her spear cracking had the volume and tenor of a great oak being split in two. Before it split fully in half though, Reldin was leaping backwards.

Where he’d been standing four new spears appeared, blasting into the earth and throwing up a cloud of dust which instantly covered the arena and was only held back by the barrier of the silver flames.

As fast as the dust arose though, it plummeted to the ground, revealing Reldin with an outstretched fist as he cleared the arena to find his foe.

His foe who was unexpectedly absent from view.

To his credit, Reldin wasn’t taken as unaware by Idrina’s maneuver as everyone else in the arena was. A moment before her attacks hit him, he glanced up to find her descending towards him following a hail of black and shadowy spears.

I expected him to conjure a shield, or simply parry the ones which were aimed directly at him. Instead he moved. Fast.

In hindsight it was a good choice.

Where the shadowy spears landed, the ground dissolved into smoke. It didn’t burn, I would have smelled that, and it didn’t explode into dust like with the earlier attack. It disintegrated.

Idrina landed and called a spinning circle of spears up to guard her flank just in time to ward off something like two dozen blows which Reldin landed in the blink of an eye. 

Ilyan had been right. Reldin was able to deal with Idrina’s speed.

I’d been right too though.

Raising her hands, Idrina called a hundred spears up to rise in a circle, filling the arena.

There was no where Reldin could run to avoid them all.

And none of them were her actual attack.

With a wave of his hand, he shattered every spear between himself and Idrina, reducing them to harmless metal dust and wood splinters.

What he missed was the one she conjured from the ground directly below his right foot.

I don’t think it should have been possible for her to punch through the armor of his boot. The metal on Reldin’s foot was thick and all sorts of protective glyphs were glowing on it. If there was anywhere he was well protected, the bottom on his foot should have been near the top of the list.

The shadowy spear didn’t seem to care about any of that though.

Nor did Reldin’s foot fare any better than the ground had. 

One moment he was pinned in place and screaming in pain, the next everything below his knee simply puffed away into smoke.

With his one good leg, he leapt at her, slashing through a barrage of spears before slamming into a golden one Idrina summoned into her hands.

The force of his blow was unreal for someone who had no more leverage than a single legged jump could provide and Idrina wasn’t well braced for it. She managed to block the blade from sheering her in half but the impact spun her around and into the silver flames.

She rolled away instantly, dousing the flames which had sprung up around her right arm but as she rose I could see she hadn’t extinguished them before they did some serious damage.

Magical damage I guessed? She hadn’t burned long enough and her arm was too intact for there to be purely heat related trauma involved, especially since her right arm was hanging all but lifeless at her side. 

With her left hand, she conjured another barrage of spears. That would have been enough to finish Reldin off if he hadn’t risen to stand on both of his perfectly intact feet and sweep them aside from a wave of his hands. 

I shook my head and blinked.

Something smelled wrong.

Very wrong.

There was a buzzing in the air and the scent of a familiar and entirely unwelcome magic.

Idrina called another golden spear to her hands and met Reldin’s blade in hand-to-hand again.

He was ready for her speed.

And she was ready for his might.

Her first blow didn’t try to slip past his defenses, or come at his from a tricky angle.

She simply hit him so fast and hard that even catching her blow on his sword didn’t dissipate the force.

Reldin was knocked back into the same patch of silver flames that Idrina had been, and like her, where the flames touched him, his body went limp.

Except the magic came again.

The magic and a scream.

Utter anguish.

I felt my skin tingling and my nerves all light up.

I had to do something.

Something was horrible wrong.

I just had no idea what.

Then Reldin started moving again.

Without any weakness.

Without any hesitation.

And without any humanity.

I watched his next seven moves.

They were quick, but that was a given. They were powerful, but all of his movements had been. They were not human though ad that was new.

I’ve spent a lot of time studying how humans move. It was a rather important trick to work out so that people didn’t instinctively figure out I wasn’t one of them. 

Like I was instinctively figuring out that Reldin wasn’t human anymore.

I wanted to scream that they had to stop the fight. That it wasn’t fair anymore.

Except it had never been fair.

And no one would stop the fight.

Well, no one except Idrina.

It didn’t matter that her opponent was fast, or strong, or even inhuman, because I’d been right about something else – she had been holding back.