Year 30 before the Ascension of the Celestial Monarch
Silence and blood.
And suddenly a bellow like that of mechanical beasts.
The impact of metal against metal, engine against engine, resonated in the distance.
The two duelists exchanged thrusts with their colossal and roaring swords, silencing the crowd.
The engines of the technoswords churned in mutual defiance as both metal pieces, more than two meters long, found themselves planting the enemies face to face.
Two men.
One with hair black as ebony, covered in a leather jacket of an unknown reptile and bearing an ashen wolf emblem; his arms, bare and marred by bloody cuts inflicted by his adversary, were carved with crimson runes.
While on the other side, a young man, just as tall and bordering on three meters, stood erect with an arrogant posture despite the multiple wounds and cuts showing on his body.
He had a magnificent appearance: golden hair like curls of gold fell down his neck like a lion's mane; dressed in a white cloak and a black leather breastplate, he carried a technosword just like his opponent.
Ducanor moved first. The speed he manifested was enough to stun the crowd, who lost sight of him for an instant.
But Talos did not.
His opponent, Talos Vesperia, received the attack with inhuman speed as the sword's engine roared loudly anticipating the impact.
Both recoiled millimetrically; in less than a breath, the arm that had been forced backward by Ducanor and Talos's body, which had been pushed back a few centimeters into the ground, moved forward, breaking any counter-shock they might have received simply with brutality.
And then the spectacle began.
Dozens of cuts, thrusts, and sweeps rained down on the combat arena, creating a blurry semi-circle around both figures for most spectators. After all, although most were not Feysir but rather Feynir and even Feyolg, they were not comparable to the physical prowess of either of these two warriors.
The match referee, a bald man showing Sanskrit runes on the nape of his neck and throat, frowned as he watched the exchange.
"These two bastards... I haven't seen two guys more bellicose since the times of the great kings of Tara," he grumbled to himself as he shouted: "Stop the fight! This is considered a draw."
But the fight did not stop; it even seemed to have intensified. Both swords, almost as large as half a door, impacted after dozens of grazes in a huge crash in the middle of the arena.
Neither spoke.
Words were not necessary; Ducanor's stern face and Talos's face with innate arrogance and haughtiness clashed as if they were another pair of swords through their gazes.
Talos's chest was bare after all the attacks he had suffered, and even blood flowed slightly down his skin, but glowing in that spot was a rune that began to emit an ominous purple light.
The Rune of the Twilight Lion.
While on the other side, facing him, the back of Ducanor's left shoulder began to glow in turn with a bright white rune opposing the power his counterpart manifested.
The Rune of the Yiyuan Butterfly.
The warm but fierce light clashed against the chilling but repressive aura; both the Lion and the Butterfly engaged in a symbolic struggle as the spectators watched the figures of both opponents superimpose with the beasts they represented.
This time definitively.
The eyelid of Talos's right eye was sliced by the butterfly's sharp wings, momentarily blinding him as blood covered his sight while he was pushed backward; at the same time, the lion slashed with its claws from the lower corner of Ducanor's lip to the middle of his cheek, which was sliced in turn by the other party.
"Dammit, you sons of bitches! Didn't I tell you the fight was over?" the surprised referee managed to say as he reacted belatedly, but it was too late.
Both figures fell backward without weapons and without strength. Both lost consciousness.
...
"Son of a..." Ducanor groaned as he got up from the bed in the middle of the infirmary. He grunted at the sharp pain he felt in his face as he tried to raise his trembling hand.
"Don't move, you've only recently regained consciousness, you shouldn't exert yourself physically beyond normal routine," said a female voice.
It was the sect doctor, as well as the person in charge of watching over the general health of the Shadow Branch Sect disciples, and that in itself was a great responsibility that even he didn't want to share.
"Thank you, Doctor Ghiran," Ducanor said in a dry tone as he grunted at the sharp pain in his cheek. Noticing it, the doctor sighed as she grabbed his face and secured what appeared to be a bandage partially covering his right cheek.
"They cut you from the edge of the lip almost to the jawbone; you were lucky, if the weapon used wasn't blunt you probably would have both blown your heads off."
Ducanor seemed to show no emotion at those words as his stern face displayed no pain or pleasure.
"It seems it didn't damage any nerves," the doctor added as she sighed with a somewhat evaluative expression, "although it wouldn't make any difference in your condition."
"I suppose it will leave a scar," said Ducanor as he turned from the bed letting his feet touch the floor, while physical stress caused a sensation of heaviness and dizziness in his body as if he had been hit in the damn head.
"You shouldn't exaggerate so much, children. I don't understand why you two got so excited during the confrontation; really, you and Talos are troublesome," said the doctor in a reproachful tone as she brought what appeared to be anesthetics.
Ducanor remained silent as he grunted his reply: "It's hard to hold back against that arrogant bastard."
"Well, you both have the qualities to be arrogant. With your prowess, you will be sent as wardens any moment now," she added as she injected an anesthetic directly into his face and then a coagulant.
"Lie down a bit, you'll soon be able to go to your room. I'll call your teacher," the nurse murmured to a somewhat drugged Ducanor, who simply lay on the bed staring at the ceiling without any expression.
"Ducanor, do you like blood?" the nurse asked suddenly as she observed with curiosity. The doctor didn't stand out in any aspect regarding appearance, which was why she wasn't popular among students or even teachers; she had an ordinary and neat face.
But her voice had a strange attractiveness in some way he wasn't able to understand why.
"Blood? What do you mean?" he asked curiously.
"I mean killing and fighting. Many students think being wardens is glory, or others believe it's respect and fame, others simply want to be strong... But it seems you want to fight, just fight and fight. Why?" she asked in a dreamy tone caused by the drugs.
"I don't know. It's simply exciting to carry a sword in hand. I don't enjoy killing, but somehow maybe that..."
Suddenly there was no answer, and those words seemed like an ephemeral dream.
Then abruptly he heard that voice again:
"Teacher Alana, thank you for coming. Sorry if you were busy, but I feared your student would stay in the infirmary all day."
Before Ducanor could open his eyes at the sudden noise of footsteps, a female figure passed a warm touch over his cheek as, to his surprise, a beautiful and mature face emerged in front of him.
"It seems you woke up, sleepyhead," his teacher, Alana Jagger, one of the most important people within the sect itself probably, murmured with a mischievous smile.
"Teacher..." Ducanor murmured as he got up quickly. The feeling of tiredness and numbness had disappeared rapidly from his body while his gaze toward Alana did not waver for a moment. No emotion or disturbance arose on Ducanor's face despite the intense gaze of a beauty such as her.
She was surprisingly young, probably not looking more than thirty or forty years old, which in itself was quite beautiful and young in the eyes of most of her students to the point that probably few women in the sect could compete with her in that regard.
She had ink-black hair tied in a simple bun, violet eyes, and skin pale as paper; she wore a one-piece uniform with a shirt underneath, which contained her mature figure in the eyes of her admirers of both genders.
But what most caught Ducanor's attention about her were her glasses; always in the sect she covered her beautiful eyes with large black-rimmed glasses that made her lose her sensual appeal for a more intellectual one. Ducanor himself doubted which of the two he preferred.
"It seems you're still quite tired despite sleeping for half a day," murmured Alana with a kind smile, as she traced his face with the tip of her fingernail, tracking the ugly scar that had the shape of a strange smile on the side of Ducanor's face, breaking the beauty of the masculine face but still retaining a quite attractive aspect he possessed previously.
"It's a pity, you had nice skin."
"The face won't feed me," Ducanor grunted as he got up and grabbed the spare uniform she had handed him, anticipating that, Alana.
"But you could live well off that. With a face like yours and your mysterious personality, you could be a good gigolo," Alana mocked.
With a smile, she turned as she left the infirmary knowing he would follow her.
"Yes, whatever you say, Teacher," said Ducanor without taking Alana's words too seriously; after all, he was quite used at this point to that aspect of his teacher's personality.
Today was the decisive day finally: he would take the exam to truly prove if he was worthy of the title of warden.