Will the knight Percival defeat Zeraled a man as fast as lightning before he goes blind?
Or will Zeraled kill him before he can perceive?
The question hung in the air like smoke, unanswered, unanswerable. Only the battle itself would decide.
Zeraled moved.
Not forward behind. He appeared at Percival's back as if he had teleported, his hands shaped into blades fingers pressed together, edges hardened, inclined for maximum penetration. He struck three times in rapid succession.
Shink. Shink. Shink.
Left side. Three stabs aimed at kidney, lung, heart.
Percival's enhanced eyes caught the movement barely. The first stab missed as he twisted his torso. The second grazed his side, opening a shallow cut that immediately wept blood. The third
He turned.
Not away. Into.
His spear spun through a circular motion circumduction, they called it in Camelot's training yards. The blade arced around his body even as he thrust it forward. It was not an attack, not really. It was something else.
A trap.
Zeraled's hand-blade entered the spinning circle. The spear's edge caught his wrist. If he didn't pull back now, the motion would peel him skin first, then muscle, then the delicate web of veins and blood vessels, then bone. Layer by layer. Inch by inch. Until nothing remained but a stripped skeleton where his hand used to be.
Zeraled's eyes widened.
Then he smiled.
"Well," he said, almost cheerfully. "A good punch to the face will do."
His other hand came up. Not in a blade in a fist. And from that fist, he launched.
Strikes. Dozens of them. A flurry of punches aimed at Percival's face, his eyes, his vision. Each one was fast faster than anything Percival had faced before. He couldn't block them all. Couldn't dodge them all. Could only weather them.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
Punches landed. His head snapped left, right, back. His grip on the spear weakened. The trap loosened.
Zeraled jumped away.
He landed several yards distant, breathing hard, his wounded hand dripping blood onto the sand. The hand was a mess cut in multiple places, deep gashes that showed glimpses of bone. But it was still attached. Still his.
He looked at it, then at Percival, and grinned.
"That was close," he said. "Really close. I like you even more now."
Percival didn't respond.
He was blinking. Rapidly. Desperately. His vision his precious, enhanced, bleeding vision had blurred. For just a second, but a second was all it took. All it would ever take against an opponent like this.
This technique, he thought, wiping blood from his eyes, is quite costly.
He knew the mechanics by heart. Had practiced them for years, decades, centuries. The ability to contract every muscle within and around the eye to an extreme degree when pushed to its highest level, it granted a level of sight beyond anything a seasoned warrior could achieve. You could see the wind. You could see the intent before the movement. You could see
The only problem, he reminded himself, is the effect.
Temporary blindness. About an hour, if he stopped now. But if he pushed further if he really pushed the cost became permanent.
No more sight. Ever.
He wiped more blood from his eyes, smearing it across his cheek.
I need to make use of it to its fullest. Now.
When he was alive when Camelot still stood, when the world still made sense he had used this technique many times. But his opponents then were knights, soldiers, men. None of them were this fast. None of them could blur like Zeraled.
Could he be the fastest person I've ever faced?
Percival shook his head, clearing the thought.
No. I'll beat him. I'll
He contracted his eye muscles again.
More.
More.
MORE.
The pain was incredible. Like needles driving into his pupils. Like fire behind his sockets. But he pushed through it, pushed past it, pushed until
The world changed.
It was as if a veil had been lifted. As if he was seeing not with his eyes, but with something deeper. Something beyond.
Zeraled stood before him, still as stone except he wasn't still. There were projections around him. Multiple versions of him, each slightly different, each pointing in a different direction. They shimmered like heat haze, like ghosts, like possibilities.
What
Zeraled jumped.
And as he jumped, his direction aligned with one of the projections Percival saw.
Motion prediction.
This was the highest level of the technique. The peak. The summit. Percival's eyes weren't just seeing movement anymore they were predicting it. Reading the micro-twitches of muscles before they fired. Following the tiny shifts of weight before they became motion. Knowing where Zeraled would be before he got there.
Percival smiled.
It was not a kind smile.
"Let's go," he said quietly. "Shall we?"
He crossed his spear both hands on the shaft, the blade pointing up. Then he twisted. Each end turned the opposite way, the metal groaning with the strain. And then
Click.
They detached.
The spear separated into two weapons shorter now, each with its own blade, its own edge, its own purpose. Percival held one in each hand, the movements smooth, practiced, perfect.
Zeraled's eyes went wide.
"So," he breathed, "you like dual combat?"
He laughed high and delighted.
"That's nice! I'm straight hands, though!"
Percival rushed him.
The twin blades became a storm. Stabs to the head left, right, left, right each one aimed at a vital point, each one nearly landing. Zeraled dodged them all, his body twisting and flowing like water, but the margin was shrinking. The distance between blade and flesh was getting smaller.
He can see me, Zeraled realized. He can actually see me.
"Oh my," he said, dodging another stab, "your eyes don't look good." He reached out one hand extended toward Percival's face, toward those bleeding, dying eyes. "Should I take them for you? I think you'd see better without them."
His fingers touched Percival's cheek.
Percival smiled.
"I can see it," he said, and his voice was soft, almost gentle. "I can see you."
Zeraled's hand froze.
"You're fucking slow."
The smile widened.
It was the smile of a psychopath.
Percival's left blade swung not at Zeraled's body, but at the side of his head. At his jaw.
CRACK!
The impact was perfect. The blade connected with bone, with cartilage, with everything that made Zeraled's face work. His jaw shattered not cracked, not broken, but shattered. Pieces of bone pushed through skin. Blood sprayed.
Zeraled flew.
He tumbled across the ground, fetching up against a rock several yards away. He lay there, stunned, his ruined jaw hanging at an impossible angle, his eyes wide with shock and pain and something else.
Admiration.
He tried to speak, but only wet gargling sounds emerged.
Percival stood over him, twin blades dripping, his eyes still bleeding, his smile still fixed on his face.
The chapter ended there in the space between victory and cost, between the man Percival had been and the warrior he had become.
Behind him, the black sphere continued to grow.