Gaheris's voice tore across the battlefield like a wounded animal's cry.
"You dare defame the name of our fellow knight!" His sword was already rising, his body already moving. "One who I was indebted to! One who I called my own brother!"
He lunged.
His blade shot forward a vertical stab aimed directly at Titus's head. No thought. No strategy. Just rage.
Titus shifted his head to the side. The blade passed close enough to stir his hair, but not close enough to touch.
"How pitiful." The general's voice was calm, almost bored. "I expected a real challenge. Are you sure you know how to wield a sword?"
Gaheris didn't answer. Couldn't answer. His blade pulled back and stabbed again. Left. Right. Left. Right.
Each attack came faster than the last, the tip of his sword beginning to trace a pattern around Titus's head. A cage of steel. A web of death.
Titus sat there still cross-legged, still calm evading each attack with small movements of his head. Tilting. Ducking. Shifting. The blade never touched him.
Inside his mind, the general was analyzing.
What is this? He watched Gaheris's movements with clinical detachment. His attacks are really sloppy. Is it perhaps his anger that is making him lack focus? There's a lot of killing intent in his attacks, but...
He looked at Gaheris's face at the twisted features, the wild eyes, the desperation.
He smiled.
Fear. That's why it feels wasted. He's afraid of me.
He tilted his head, letting another stab pass by his ear.
I'm really disappointed. A true warrior does not fear any outcome on the battlefield. A true warrior lives for the battle.
He spoke aloud, his voice cutting through Gaheris's frenzy.
"Ol put your back into it, will you? Can you really call that an attack?" He deflected another stab with a flick of his wrist. "At this point in time, it doesn't even matter if your skill is of the highest level. Your mind is clouded by nonsensical emotion."
Gaheris's face contorted.
"SHUT UP, YOU BASTARD!" His voice cracked with fury. "RECEIVE! "
Something changed.
The sword's path shifted. It was no longer just fast stabs it was something else. The blade began to spin as it moved, the tip tracing a spiral pattern in the air. It was like watching a tornado compressed into a single point of steel.
Titus's eyes narrowed.
He moved his head to evade and the blade followed. The spiral pulled the attack in a new direction, tracking his movement like a hound on a scent.
He tried again. The blade followed again.
This is off. His mind raced. The attack is not straight. It's like a tornado. It keeps coming.
He smiled.
"Perhaps," he said, "I made a quick judgement of you. You aren't as pathetic as I believed you are."
His hand shot up.
WHAP!
The slap was casual almost lazy but the force behind it was devastating. His palm slammed into the flat of Gaheris's sword, and the blade flew from the knight's grip.
CRACK! CRUNCH!
The sound of bones shattering echoed across the battlefield.
Gaheris's wrist collapsed. The delicate bones that made up his hand and wrist.the carpals, the metacarpals, the everything. were destroyed by the force of the impact. His hand hung at a wrong angle, limp and useless.
He would never wield a sword again.
"AAAAAAHHHHHH!"
The scream tore from his throat raw, primal, agonized. He clutched his ruined wrist, blood already pouring between his fingers, his face white with shock and pain.
Titus watched him for a moment. Then his leg extended.
CRACK! CRUNCH! BOOM!
His foot slammed into Gaheris's leg specifically, into his femur. The thickest bone in the human body. The bone that should have been able to withstand tremendous force.
It exploded.
Not just broken. Not just fractured. The femur detonated from the inside out, shards of bone blasting through muscle and flesh and skin in a spray of white fragments and red blood.
Gaheris fell.
He hit the ground with a sound that was almost lost beneath his screaming the high, keening wail of a man whose body was coming apart. His leg was a ruin. His wrist was a ruin. He lay there, broken and bleeding, and could do nothing but scream.
Titus looked down at him.
"Yes." The general's voice was soft, almost gentle. "Now that's how it's supposed to be."
He tilted his head, studying the knight's ruined face.
"Are you enjoying the view from there?"
Gaheris couldn't answer. Couldn't speak. Could only suffer.
Titus raised his sword, its edge catching the grey light.
"Now let me show you," he said quietly, "what you were wasting."
The other knights watched, frozen.
And somewhere above, Darlington watched too.