For a second, I forgot to hate it.
The fight. The System. The noise.
Because under all the blood and breath and rage, there it was, something close to wonder.
I was competing.
Not surviving. Not scraping by. Competing.
A Legacy reject in his underwear trading blows with a Classed warrior the System built out of numbers and prayers.
And I wasn't losing.
Sure, he was a little gilded shit, more polish than power, but still.
This was supposed to be impossible.
He had the titles. The stats. The bonuses.
I had calluses, bad habits, and a Brand that wouldn't stop whispering more.
Hagar had told me about this, said the Berserksúlur messed with the data, broke the neat equations the System used to keep people like me in our place.
He was right.
Without those pillars, without the Brand syncing, I'd be paste on the ground.
If this fop had gone for a kill instead of a leash, I'd already be a footnote.
The thought should've made me scared. It didn't.
It made me grateful.
Not to the System, never that.
To Hagar.
To the ugly old bastard who looked at me bleeding and said, "If it hurts, good. Share it with the class."
He'd been right about that too.
Pain wasn't my weakness anymore; it was my vocabulary.
And this fight, this ridiculous, shining parody of a duel, was my thank-you note.
The fop had no idea what he'd woken up when he tried to make me kneel.
He thought he understood pain.
He'd sampled it. Dabbed a little on his blade like perfume. Caused it to others.
But I was built in it.
Molded by it.
Every scar a lesson. Every break a teacher.
Yeah, I've seen the movie.
He wanted a pet.
He got my trap card instead. Pain doesn't break me it makes me stronger!
Gremlin Mode wasn't just running anymore, it was purring.
Every swing, every scream, every mistake he made tasted like proof that I'd been right all along.
They could dress up power in gold, but they couldn't make it real.
He slashed, low to high. I gave him the haft and took the slice across ribs when the angle went wrong. It burned. Flesh knit with the sloppiest thread you can imagine. Breath hitched, then evened. His eyes widened at the steam-curl heal. He stabbed and the point skated along the rib I'd just grown back and stuck in the meat of my flank. He tried to twist. I stepped in so close his own hilt punched his breastplate. He couldn't finish the turn. He swore. I laughed.
Not nice.
Not sane.
But honest.
He ripped the blade free. Blood came. Heat climbed my spine, the Brand along my back drinking like it had been thirsty for years. I exhaled. Things clicked. The map of him drew itself behind my eyes. Cheap plates on pretty leather. The gorget seam that cheated at the neck. A left knee that hated deep bends. A right wrist starting to tremble when he lifted from the shoulder instead of the elbow.
He tried for my head. He wanted that flash of panic you get before the skull breaks. He didn't get it. I ducked. His sword tore a screaming stripe through smoke and shaved a curl off my ear. Blood hit my shoulder. Heat closed it. I rose under his guard and clapped the axe head to the inside of his vambrace. No cut. A crush. He yelped and stumbled, eyes bright with offended shock.
"You can't," he said.
"Guess I didn't get the memo." I spat red and smiled. "Don't worry, you'll beg prettier once it starts to hurt. Hope you remember the safe word"
He backed a step. Just one. Truth showed there. He hid it by roaring something about oaths and hosts and the Accord's mercy. He lunged. I let the point kiss my shoulder for angle. Axe heel smacked the side of his knee. He buckled, caught himself.
He shouted his name. Or his unit's. Or his daddy's. He waved the sword like it was a deed to my soul. He swung and swung. The edges of him blurred, not from speed, from me refusing to look at anything that didn't matter. Lines lit up like stars.
He didn't want to kill me at first. He wanted to own me.
Every strike came with space left over for speeches. Every hit stopped just shy of final. He wanted me broken in the right shape. Trained. Displayed.
But something changed.
Somewhere between my laughter and his first taste of fear, he realized I wasn't breaking.
The rhythm slipped. His confidence cracked. You could feel the moment he stopped preaching and started fighting for real.
The next swing wasn't a lesson. It was an execution that missed.
We stumbled through the dead, over a boar with a second mouth where its throat used to be, through goblin hands that twitched and forgot how. The cart wheel creaked behind us like it wanted to weigh in.
He caught me again. Edge along the forearm. Bad angle. Deep. A line of fire that should've ended my grip. It didn't. The Brand on my back threw a bridge where there wasn't one. Ugly flesh. Functional. He saw it, and something in his eyes changed.
The fear was still there, but it was smaller now, packed tighter, meaner.
The kind that kills what it can't control.
He took a half-step back like I'd shown him a trick with teeth. His voice came out thinner.
"Stop," he said. "You stop now."
I grinned through the blood. "Say please."
He flushed. The scream came raw, no sermon in it, just teeth. He charged. We hit a wrecked tent frame that tried to be a cage and remembered it was broken. Canvas wrapped a leg. Poles snapped. I rolled through grit and came up coughing dust with the axe in both hands. He hacked at the tent like the world owed. He stumbled, caught himself, spun into his pose and jabbed the sword at me.
His face twisted. "Fine. Die."
"No." I tilted my head and smiled with ar to many teeth.
He flinched at the word like it had fingers. Then he committed. A straight pin meant to staple me to a log. I batted it across my body and walked into his chest. Elbow to helm. The axe beard hooked his pauldron seam. I twisted. Leather screamed. A strap popped. His shoulder direction and didn't know how to move without it. He hissed like a kettle. I drove the my skull into his nose. He snapped at me like a panicked dog. I laughed. It sounded right in this place.
He shoved me off hard. I slid. He dragged pride over fear like a cloak and barked to nobody about the Third Radiant Host not faltering. The words came out classroom flat.
Downward chop. Caught. He whipped across. I bled. He thrust. I turned. The tip carved along rib and tried to live there. It failed. Heat and stitch. Heat and stitch. The bear breathed with me. Not louder. Deeper.
The fight got quiet. His mouth still moved. His sword still moved. His blessings still pretended. The forest and the smoke and the dead didn't care. They listened to one sound only.
Me refusing.
I walked him back, half a step at a time. He still landed hits. I let him. Pain is a currency. I paid and kept walking. Each foot of ground he lost put a tremor in his wrist. Each breath I took that wasn't a plea tightened his jaw.
Light crawled his blade and blew out in a cone that threw sparks from every wet surface. It wanted to knock me down and keep me there. It wanted a kneel baked into bone. It tried. The Brand along my back said no. The cone turned into glow on smoke and died.
He stared at the sword like it owed him blood. His grip went white. "More," he hissed at the steel, no prayer left, just hate. Then he drove it at my throat.
"Finally," I said. "Stop begging the light and try to actually do something."
He stepped. Slipped. The mud had picked a side. He swung from his heels anyway. I let the axe take it, rolled my wrists, dragged his blade into the mud where it belonged. His hands wouldn't let go. Pride didn't permit it. I kicked his wrist and something small gave. His fingers opened like a child learning to share. The sword stayed by muck and a strap. He yanked it free and panted.
He wasn't saying kneel anymore. He wanted me dead now. And for some reason that made me such a happy camper.
Things narrowed. Not brighter. Not bigger. Just true. A thin blue seam under everything.
He tried to talk again. The Third Radiant Host lifts the mee... I stepped into his breath and cracked the butt of the axe across his mouth. Teeth clicked. Blood ran under gold.
The sweat changed. Pride sweat is clean. Fear sweat is animal. The first curl of it reached me. I smiled and handed it back.
A charge. I pivoted and let him pass. Dropped the axe into the back of his thigh where plates cheat so knees can bend. Not a cut. A blunt kiss that makes meat refuse orders. He screamed. He didn't fall. He refused that. Credit where it's due. He turned too slow. I was already there. The axe head rested on his chest plate. He looked down at it, then up at me, and finally understood what my smile meant.
"Please," he said. Reflex. No meaning.
"Good," I said, grinning. "Now let's do it again."
I stepped back and gifted him another try. He took it like a drowning man takes a drink. He swung from nowhere. Ugly. Honest. I respected that more than anything he'd done. I blocked. He hit. I hit. We built a little world out of pain and refusal and lived there until one of us had to leave.
He tried to circle right. His bad wrist betrayed him. I cut left and tapped his helm with the flat. Not enough to split. Enough to ring his bell. He wobbled. Planted. Now he looked small.
"Why won't you DIE!" he screamed.
I smiled wider. "The safe word is please remember. You'll get there."
I could end it. The lines were all there. Neck. Knee. Wrist. The soft place where visor meets pride. I didn't. Not yet. He needed to understand. Not mercy. Education.
Its not that I'm having fun, its all educational, I promise.
He lunged again. I let him taste every mistake. I let him feel armor pull wrong when nobody claps. I let him hear his breath hate him.
The raised sword, his call to that light, and the light didn't answer like before. It came late. It came small. It came for me. I walked through it until it was smoke again.
He stabbed. I took it on my chest. There was no power anymore at all. He tried to wrench. I rolled my wrists, stripped him off the bind, and slammed the axe heel into the notch of his collar. Not killing. Educational. His legs tried to leave without permission. He caught himself with the sword buried in mud like a farmer with a bad stake. He looked up and saw what I had become under the blood and the heat and the quiet. He fell to his knees.
He tried to lift the sword again. His hands didn't want to. He tried to pull air for another speech. Air didn't want him either. He tried to turn me back into a problem that bows for paperwork.
"Please," he said again, smaller.
"Better," I said. "On your knees you are almost cute."