The Spire's shadow still clung to Eliakim like a second cloak as he and his companions rode the ridge-line north. Below, the Talon Strike Team moved in their own formation — not quite a march, not quite a patrol. It was the glide of predators who already owned the ground they walked on.
Eliakim kept his eyes on them, committing every twitch and turn to memory. This wasn't just idle curiosity anymore. If they met again — and they would — it would be a chess match played at knife range.
Korras moved first into his mental ledger. The big man's pace never changed, even when the trail narrowed. He didn't guard the flanks — he was the flanks. When a loose stone skittered near his boot, he didn't look down; he reached for it without breaking stride, Gravebind gauntlets closing like a trap. Eliakim imagined what that grip would feel like — the slow locking of joints, the siphon of strength heartbeat by heartbeat. You couldn't pull free. You had to break his hold before he broke you.
Don't let him touch you, Eliakim told himself. And never give him your weapon's haft.
Veyth danced somewhere between the lines, his chain-blade whispering arcs of steel through the mist. Once, Eliakim swore he saw him step on air — but it was the blade's own segmented spine, frozen mid-whip by mana, forming a makeshift rung. Veyth laughed at something unseen, narrating his own feints as though the fight in his mind had already begun. Showman. Director. And yet… those mid-air shifts meant you could never rely on his momentum carrying him where logic said it should.
Selvas ghosted at the rear, hood low, the Arrowcatcher's Bow half-drawn but never loosed. The air bent around his nocked shaft as if even the wind obeyed him. One arrow split and hung in place until the next gust carried it forward. A battlefield under Selvas wasn't an open field — it was a cage with bars you couldn't see until you ran face-first into them.
Dravik broke the rhythm. Where the others flowed, he crashed. Axe-shield on one arm, the jagged rim chewing at the air, he seemed to test every step for the quickest route to smash through an enemy's stance. Eliakim imagined the teeth locking on his stiletto — the mana snap — the sudden, sickening weight of losing a weapon mid-clash.
Then there was Raviel. No flourish. No stomp. Just that Spindrift Edge, a shimmer so faint the eye slid off it. Twice, Eliakim thought the man had simply walked past his target in earlier fights — then the red followed after, blooming a second too late. The aftercut was as much a psychological weapon as a physical one. Make them think they're still whole. Let them take one more step. Then let the wound arrive.
Zaryth, though… Zaryth was the thread that tied them all together. The Moonfang Saber glinted briefly as he adjusted its balance — more a duelist's gesture than a soldier's. Eliakim had watched him disarm three foes in less than a breath back at the Spire, the cascade leaving each one standing, confused, with empty hands. His steps were short, explosive, like he was erasing and redrawing his position faster than an eye-blink.
But what stayed with Eliakim wasn't the blade-work. It was the moment afterward — the brief touch to a downed Talon's shoulder, the soft flare of silver along the wound. The man could return a fighter to the line in the time it took another to draw breath. That made him more dangerous than any killing blow.
And yet… the King's right hand, Serakh Draemyr, seemed to command without speaking. Scar-scored face set like iron, silver sigils catching stray light, he moved like the battle had already been decided and he was merely walking to collect the pieces. The others adjusted unconsciously around him — spacing, breathing, even when to blink. He was the anchor, the fixed star by which their formation wheeled.
Caleb edged closer in the saddle. "You're cataloguing them."
Eliakim didn't look away. "They're a machine. Pull one gear wrong, it still runs. You have to understand the whole clock before you break it."
Caleb followed his gaze to Zaryth. "You think he's the clockmaker?"
"No," Eliakim murmured. "I think he's the man selling the clock to both sides."
Because Zaryth had let them live in the Spire. Eliakim could feel it now — the fight had been more test than execution. And it wasn't loyalty to the King alone. The man moved like someone with three games running at once: the visible one in front of his enemy, the hidden one for his master… and a third he kept entirely to himself.
Eliakim had read about men like that in war diaries — saboteurs who wore both uniforms and neither. It was never ideology. It was the thrill of playing the board from the shadows, of making kings and pawns dance without ever touching them.
The Talons crested a rise ahead, silhouettes against the sky. The formation shifted — Veyth looping wide left, Raviel gliding forward, Dravik slowing his pace to let Selvas set an invisible perimeter. Korras and Zaryth angled inward toward Serakh, the movement as seamless as a blade sliding into its sheath.
A test run, Eliakim realized. They weren't hunting prey right now. They were reminding him what it would look like when they did.
He let the image burn into memory — the interplay of speed and brute force, the way Selvas's arrows bent routes into death funnels, how Dravik's shield-shock would drive him exactly where Korras's Gravebind waited. How Raviel's polite murder would slip between the cracks if he misread the rhythm even once. And behind it all, Zaryth, playing a longer game than anyone else on that ridge suspected.
When we meet again, Eliakim thought, it won't be a brawl. It'll be the longest second of my life… played over and over until someone runs out of moves.