=^.ᴥ.^=ﾉ

Green eyes glowed in the darkness. It was strange, phantasmal, how the world could be lit by so many stars and still dark. Their hands in front of their face were clear enough, though. It was only her who seemed shrouded in shadow.

"Calculating, Clemency?" There was an edge of mirth in her voice, but mostly malice.

It almost blushed to be caught, but of course she knew that they would be assessing the battlefield. They were surprised she even let them take anything in. They wouldn't have. She could've won the first fight in seconds if she wanted, purely because of the element of surprise. But she didn't want to win, not yet. She wanted them to be afraid. That was a mistake, and they didn't reply to the jibe.

K smiled, all teeth, letting her sword drop in false surrender. "Go on," she urged. "What have you learnt?"

There's nowhere to hide, they thought instantly. What they said, though, was, "you have a weird taste in personal limbos, kitty cat."

They barely finished speaking before she was on them, furious at the insult. Just as they expected, or - hoped. There was no time for satisfaction, though. Her sword came down at their shoulder, but they dodged to the right, swinging in the same motion to slash at her neck. To her discredit, she seemed shocked at the escalation to a killing blow. It hadn't done what they hoped, though, because of the shock and the loss of momentum from shifting at the last second.

They'd both escaped with mere scratches. That did not last long.

Throughout the course of this first fight, Clem realised: she favoured her left side. She was trained in the skill but didn't often use swords. She only started trying to incapacitate once they did, preferring to cause pain. And this one was the kicker — she fought so fucking dirty.

It was her turf, but it felt grossly unfair that she had so much influence over it. The floor was solid beneath them, but they swore that she shifted it, so they fell, tripping backwards and landing solidly on their back, hitting the back of their head as they did. They saw stars, literal and metaphorical, purple pinpricks spinning in their vision. The lack of any other focal point made the disorientation worse, and the pain kept them down long enough for her to step closer. They started to push up, queasy, but (- and this would later be downright embarrassing, how little she tried -) she pressed a boot to their chest and the resulting pressure made them sigh. A forced exhale, a manufactured surrender.

"Scared yet?" she sneered again, levelling her sword at its neck. She was trying to seem composed, but blood seeped out from gashes in her clothes. She was not any less injured than they were. "Because you should be."

Truthfully, it was not. Clem felt drained, more than anything. It could take more hits than most, and she was agile, dodging enough hits to spark genuine frustration. This frenzy had gone on too long. Both of them were too strong, too well matched. For a flash, it worried about what was to come.

"Okay," it croaked mildly. "Whatever you say. Kitten." This part was, in essence, a yielding. They could have continued fighting, but they had time. Once their strength returned, they could try again.

Her sword came down straight through the trachea. It couldn't embed into the ground, so Clem choked on the agony as it fell to the side once she let go. Almost a full decapitation, except messier and altogether worse. It cut the carotid, mercifully cutting short the time it had to spend gurgling for air around the gaping hole in its throat. The boot now forcing their lung cavity closed made it quicker, but more painful. Clem heard ribs break, and the next time they opened their eyes, K was gone. She hadn't picked up the sword, so they had to drag themselves away from the blade so their neck could heal. Stars blurred. With their vocal cords useless, the sounds they made were unlike anything they'd ever heard. The seconds stretched out painfully. Despite everything, it felt like it took far too long to die.

—

The stars watched them die. The stars watched them wake up.

For a moment, Clem tried to think whether they had been dead long enough to miss a whole day, but it never usually took that long. No moons. The stars were difficult to isolate, and in no recognisable constellations. None seemed particularly brighter than any others. They wondered how far away they were from home, and felt, impossibly, the tightening of tendons in the muscle of their heart. Stop, they thought. Don't go there.

As they brought up a hand gingerly to their neck, their fingers felt tight with the crusting over of blood from their knuckles. Her blood, too, very likely. All the blood remained, and the memory of the pain, but they could clean the blood, and pain would never stop them fighting.

Still, they got up carefully, assessing. Nothing hurt in the way it did when it needed tending to. No stabbing, burning, nothing that seemed poisoned or like it was resisting healing. Good.

They summoned the armour. Then they took it off, frowning. It was stored in a pocket dimension, as was the rest of their armoury. Easy access, if they needed it. Which they did. But did they want it? Was protecting themselves the goal here? Did they need to make themselves harder to hit, because that would buy the rest of them more time? They knew K's type, though. They would hate for her to make them lose their temper with taunting.

What do you need all that protection for? Where's it going to get you? You're destined for the grave, Clem.

In the end, they were right about her attitude. But they still should have worn armour. If they hadn't already died for it, it would be tempting fate to say that pride would kill them one day.

—

Clem knew that there would be no time to breathe. They had trained themselves to never relax fully, to always be ready for danger to strike.

It was one thing to know it, though, and another to one second be resting, in a state of relative ease, and in the next, be hit with a barrage of attacks from someone aiming not only to kill, but to hurt. They felt an unrelenting scorn build in the back of their mind at the thought of it. The very act of her simply materialising was dirty. It wasn't fair.

It was fair, though. In a cosmic sense. They asked for it. They could have guessed she would not make it easy for them.

They grit their teeth and threw up their shield, blocking a blow that aimed to slash across their face. Not lethal, obviously, but they weren't stupid enough to think that she didn't know how to kill. K just didn't care about lethal now that she had time to make them suffer.

This was part of the plan, of course. They would buy time for centuries if they could.

"Think you're so fucking brave, huh? Hiding behind - "

Anger surged at the notion that they were hiding. Shields were not cowardly, but they were halfway to dismissing it when Ruth's voice in their mind cut through the haze.

Don't let her rile you up.

It stayed up. For a second, because she disintegrated it in the next. They lunged, she dodged, and then they started circling. Clem felt wild blood bubble at the familiar motion. Something twitched and growled in their core. The locket around their neck burned — pleasantly, but it burned. Not yet, they promised.

"Rude," they hissed. "I was using that."

She shrugged. "And I decided you don't need it." So fucking pompous. It was indescribable, how intensely they wanted to wipe the smile off her face.

Clem scoffed. "I don't need it. I was using it."

With that, the pause was over. She cut them, they healed, they cut her and blood spilled out of her with reckless abandon. But she was angry and stronger, and refused to let herself be hit, throwing up shadow or shifting slightly so their sword only met air. They tired quicker than they'd expected, the sword slipping out of their hands slick with sweat and blood. They fell to a knee, and she knocked the back of their head with — something? A fist? The hilt of her sword? It didn't matter. They fell flat, exhausted, and knew that they had lost.

When the sword impaled the centre of their back, and twisted, a guttural groan escaped them as they heard their own vertebrae break. The shock of their spinal cord being severed was masked by a sudden, aching memory. They'd died like this before. They knew, somehow, that she was reminding them of it, of her involvement in that one. The betrayal stung, even now.

Perhaps she meant to make them feel weak. Unsteady. All it did was piss them off.

—

One boot pinned their chest down, the other crushed their hand. Broken. It would be a miracle if even a single bone was intact, given how she ground it into the ground. The pain was unbearable, cutting off their speech and blacking out their vision. They screamed, for the first time. The sound of it rung in their ears, even now. Embarrassing. Pathetic.

They could not see her, face to the ground, but they did not want to. The air was thick with the stench of their blood. Their heart beat unsteadily, magic and pain working to oppose each other. Clem knew: they could not survive this. They would simply run out of blood before it could heal them. An early death would be a mercy, and they suspected they were going to get it.

"Scared?" she asked. The axe blade grazed the base of their neck. An execution.

She liked asking it, as if waiting for the fight that they would say yes. They did not, hoarse and shallow breaths all they could manage with their ribs cracked and lungs bleeding. They would not have admitted fear even if they could. Of course they were scared. It was the most natural thing in the world, but it would not stop them fighting. Not when they had a job to do. A duty to fill.

"No," they whispered. Mostly an exhale of breath more than any real answer. They accepted it, gritting their teeth as pain shot down their arm again. This was one death closer to the end.

She pressed the axe down further, choking them. It cut into their neck now, and blood flowed down it. They tasted it, metallic and warm. Perhaps if they were at full strength, if the locket wasn't cutting off half of their power, it may be easier to survive this.

"Then you're fucking stupid," she growled. "You're nothing. It is going to be this, over and over, and when I find your fucking friends again, I will delight in recounting how easily you yielded to me."

They somehow found the strength to feel indignant at the lie. She would lie, if she won and they lost. This alone could give them enough strength to keep going. They would not have their name slandered if they could help it.

Clem gasped — the last gasp that they would take. Their brainstem had never been severed before. The pain was not as terrifying as the gasping was. Air refused to fill their lungs. Nerve took the longest to regenerate.

Their last conscious thought: I wouldn't get too cocky, K. I'm just getting started.

—

It was interesting at least, after all this time, to figure out how K fought.

"You really like getting in people's heads, huh?"

They kept their voice low, unsure if they even cared about being audible. She heard them anyway, narrowing her eyes. Her lip curled when she replied.

"Is it not effective?"

Clem tilted their head, an almost concession. Leading her on. "It just seems like if you didn't have that, you'd have nothing."

The next swing of the sword came down harder, faster, too quick for them to dodge. If it had been an axe, she might have taken their arm off at the shoulder.

"Nothing?" The anger was more than audible. They felt it, tight and squeezing.

Despite the pain shooting through their arm and torso, Clem smiled. The effect would have been more of a grimace, but they knew that they smiled. They wanted to make her angry. They wanted to make her fight recklessly, clumsily. They were learning her movements, and they could feel the tide turning. It was only a matter of time, and they had so much of it.

"Do you think your friend would have joined me if I offered nothing?"

Truthfully, Clem did not hear the back half of the taunt. But their anguish came through in the way they started a silent offence, frustrated with the play and furious with the reminder.

"Ultimately, Clemency," she continued, "There is no relationship without transaction. You can delude yourself all you like that I manipulated, or forced an outcome that suited me, but all I did was offer a good deal. It was the smart choice. And here you are, a glorified guard dog, fighting for - what? Do you seriously think there's honour in this?"

She was distracted by the talking, and they were so focused on ignoring her that they disarmed her - easily, sword swinging in the air and landing lightly in their offhand. They held the two weapons in a cross at her neck, noting distantly how she did not react and did not surrender.

"You don't know anything about honour," they growled.

K grinned, all sharp teeth. "It's touching, really, how loyal you are. Where has it gotten you? You think they care about you, but we both know that's impossible. You could do the smart thing and abandon this, and I'll let you walk away free."

Clem, by this point, was so angry that they could not speak. They thought: you know nothing about me, and you know nothing about my friends, and I know I'm nothing more than a sword, I've never wanted to be anything else, and you must be fucking stupid if you think I would abandon someone in need, and they remembered Calyx's fear and thought they could never trust me again, actually, but I would still feel satisfied if I give you what you put them through, and I will never, ever back away from a fight.

Of course, they said none of this. The crossed swords were an X in one second, and parallel in the next. Later, they would be shocked that she did not see it coming. In the moment, though, they felt wrung out, raw, pulling the blades away from her neck as she choked and gurgled around the twin gashes.

She fell to her knees, or started to, because Clem didn't trust her for a millisecond. They thrust their sword, then hers, through her chest, making sure to hit something important. And twist. And pull them out. They paused before they did it all over again, eyes wide with shock at what they were seeing. What they were doing. For the first time, they felt the full force of their terror. Why were they so uncertain, so unsteady?

It knew why. This was an enemy who had bested it time and again, who was able to worm into their friends' minds like a parasite, who was, in all honesty, better and stronger and quicker than they were. It was strange to see her die.

The realisation came slowly, a stunned smile spreading over their face. This was the first time it had won. Blood poured, no, gushed - out of her. It would have been painful, Clem considered. Good.

Clem nudged her unmoving body with a boot, heart thumping with leftover adrenaline. They couldn't see anything healing. How would she come back? How long would it take? It wanted to watch, but it remembered how revival brought strength with it, temporary but deadly fury, a blessing or curse from whatever power had sent you back.

It backed away slowly, keeping their eyes on her. This was her domain. She would find it when she returned. For now, the various stinging places on their body threatened to tip over to outright painful, and if they let it, it would be unbearable. It needed to rest, and let themselves heal the worst of what it had sustained.

Her words barely touched it, truthfully. Clem knew that she would say them again, would want to keep gloating, but it had a job and a purpose and a duty. The history didn't matter.

—

Sleep was not needed, here. That made sense. Their eyes never tired, even though at times their body clock registered multiple 'days' of being awake. There was no cycle, simply the ever-present stars. They were too afraid to rest, even when they won. They didn't know how long she took to heal, or be revived, or however it worked, and they tried to count but it seemed so random.

After a win, they would simply walk until they could not see the body, cleaning and mending their clothes on the way, then sit, attuning to the world and its magic. It helped. They were getting better at feeling for the fabric of it, understanding when K wanted to manipulate it. Her metaphysical hands reached to tug and Clem hoped, perhaps arrogantly, that they would one day be able to oppose. Till then, they could simply learn more. There was a lot they could find out.

This meant that the only time they truly closed their eyes was in death. They didn't know how to describe the feeling of waking up with tears on their face. How did that work? In the moments before consciousness returned, after their heart restarted, their body wanted to cry?

—

It felt important, instinctively, to switch up what they were using. Never let her anticipate what was coming next, try as much as they could to get any element of surprise over her. The brass knuckles were easy, and effective. If they played their cards right, there was a chance she'd miss them till it was too late. One good punch could win them this fight. It was almost laughable, how easily the tides could turn when she expected something and they gave something else.

As it stood, she saw. Perhaps it was the glint of bronze reflecting the firmament.

"New toy, Clem?"

They were actually getting sick of the taunts. "Don't you get bored?" they asked, completely genuine. "Like, actually. Say something else. Whatever you want from me, you're not getting it."

K sighed. "I want you to hit me, then."

Clem didn't falter. They were not playing around. It was shocking that she still was. Bones cracked in her face as they made contact, and she stumbled to the ground, clutching her face.

"Funny," she spat.

They kicked her in the chest, but she grabbed their leg and pulled it down before they could recalibrate. She unsheathed a dagger in her belt — they kicked out again, using the backwards momentum to push and sit up on their knees. She lunged; they dodged and punched again, aiming for the side of her head this time. They didn't want her to have a knife - it was so difficult to defend against in close quarters. Getting cut was an inevitability.

They wanted their tail, suddenly - to disarm, but a few moments of scuffle later, they managed without. She could get a new one, so they kept her arms pinned above her head and drew a hand back to punch. They didn't have to kill her via brute force alone, but they'd rather have her unconscious.

"Must - " she coughed up blood, lips deep red with it. "Must not be very good, if you need all of this shit."

"As if you don't use - " Clem paused, an old anger resurfacing at her words. "No, fuck you. You had Calyx in chains in a fucking basement and you're insinuating that I'm the one punching down? Are you insane?" The anger was more of an inferno, or a frenzy, and it felt so good to yell.

She laughed. She actually laughed. "You know nothing about me."

Clem rolled back on their heels, picking up the knife they'd discarded to pin her dominant hand to the ground. Ignoring her almost-scream, they stared at her, incredulous. "No, I don't. By design! Clearly! You're - what the fuck is wrong with you?"

They had no idea if she was even listening. They'd given her back the knife. They didn't particularly care, all of a sudden, standing up so they could use the full advantage of their sword pointed to her chest. It was unwise to be completely unguarded, and they could use the weapon in their sleep.

"What do you want? Surely there are better things you could be doing with your time?"

The knife came for their thigh. Bad call. They swung instinctively, slicing her wrist and half of her arm.

"Give up! Fucking yield!" they yelled, furious. "You're the worst fighter I've ever met!"

They didn't get angry, categorically. Not like this. It clouded their judgement, it meant they missed tricks that they had no business missing. They had been getting so good at figuring out when she was going to draw shadows closer.

She was bleeding, glaring, at the tip of their sword, and then she had bloody hands and a knife at their neck —

Clem stared at stars on the horizon, distantly aware of a shaking in their legs, and pain. Pain everywhere, not just the neck. If anything, it was everywhere except that. It'd healed before the blood spill could get anywhere near fatal. Her grip wasn't strong enough with two damaged hands. But they panicked. How did they get here? What happened?

The locket was broken. They knew what had happened.

They knew, could taste, that the blood in its mouth was not all theirs. Chunks of flesh surrounded a body in their peripheries, solid and constant as a heartbeat. As their own heartbeat. They could feel it: in their chest, their arm, their hands. They could hear it, thumping loud and violent. It felt stronger, but Clem did not feel stronger.

They were alone. No one was watching. They felt like someone was watching. They didn't want to cry if anyone was watching.

Clem's lip wobbled. They covered their face with their hands, turning over - away from the body - away from the crime - just away - and curled up like they had when things were easier, when they did not know the sting of betrayal or the agony of grief. Their wings stretched out, soft from disuse but instinctive in their ability to protect. Quietly, they wept beneath the cover, the makeshift canopy.

Or - they tried to be quiet. The keening noises came out without permission, the gasps took over their breathing and refused their attempts at self-soothing. It felt vulnerable to fight like this, and they could not go back now. They couldn't seal their nature up alone.

The last time Clem had entered a fight without hiding, their wings had been cut off, their tail trampled. Pathetic, how averse they were to it now. It didn't like the dark. It wanted to go home.

The tears stopped just as abruptly as they'd started. Clem crawled for a moment, then pulled out a mace. Staking it down, they pulled themselves up. Without looking back, she walked away.

—

The way they fought after this would easily be described as feral, because it was. K could no longer sneak up on them. She tried to switch to ranged weapons, but the arrows simply bounced off the scales, barely leaving them with a graze. And that was when they didn't anticipate the hits. The familiar sound of displacing air was all too easy to twist their body away from.

At rest, which they had a lot of, it was almost unfathomably easier to attune now that they were not blocking off half of their magic. Their senses were stronger, better, faster. The training fell away. This was instinct.

It did not help that K, in an all too serious whisper, said that she would love to have the privilege of slaying a dragon. They gouged her eyes out for it, claws digging in deep enough to draw out the vitreous fluid. The pure, animal anger meant that part of them would have gone all the way to brain if they could. She tried to stab them in the heart, but she couldn't see and missed badly, hitting somewhere in their stomach instead. They used her own dagger to do what she couldn't, giving her a quicker death than she deserved. It felt like that whole encounter only lasted about five minutes.

They retched afterwards, covered in blood and gore, and sat with the mess for longer than they usually did, simply staring at their shaking hands. It was pure fear that had done that. They vowed to never let it get that bad again. She never tried that particular taunt again, but something inside them always heard it.

They cried more, in general. Never as intensely as the first time, but the singular sobs left Clem feeling similarly raw, like something had ripped through its core.

But, and the very fact of this kept them going — they won more fucking fights.

They stole her arrows and shot her in the thigh, watched as she bled out slowly; they clubbed the side of her skull in and spilled brain all over her stupid marble floor; they stabbed her to death, claws and daggers useful to that end in equal measure. They cracked her arm clean in half at the elbow and twisted it to show her the bone, then headbutted her and watched as her chest stopped rising. They broke her nose, just because they could. Because they were angry, and winning, and could not stop thinking of all of the people she had ruined the lives of. How dare she? Who gave her the fucking right?

She took the deaths well, annoyingly. But they supposed that she was also not getting what she wanted. They could live with the fact that she refused to scream.

It became sleek efficiency from them both, in these near-silent and furious frenzies that were simply means to an end. Her focus was razor-sharp, and still she was losing. They both knew it.

She didn't stop trying to kill them. They sported their fair share of healed bones, stab wounds that refused to heal properly because there was so much to heal, and it scared them, vaguely, but they could block out the pain. Sometimes, even they couldn't decide what the worst thing was. It didn't have time, though, to rest or heal or think about that. It just had to keep going.

The pain never ended. They were healing too quickly for it all to subside, phantom wounds frustrating them to no end. The quicker K lost, the quicker Clem could go home.

Then —

The frenzy paused.

Legimitately paused. Not officially - they were the only two in the world and thus the only ones who could make any decisions, and they had not spoken about it. But it paused. Clem won, (obviously), and walked. Their tail trailed behind them, every atom of their body full of a quiet ache. The initial surge of energy had worn off. They both were tired, now. Not physically - not in the sense that they needed sleep, or at least it was a kind of exhaustion that sleep would not fix. It was just… bone-deep exhaustion. Cellular.

K was getting sick of losing. Clem kept score. Eighteen deaths under their belt, and thirty-three of hers. That made fifty-one.

Oh. Halfway. They hadn't noticed.

For the first time, it occured to them: they didn't really need to go to a hundred if someone hit fifty wins first. That gave K seventeen chances to claw back a chance. It made them stumble. The possibility that they could completely forgo more than thirty of the brawls was staggering.

They didn't know, at this point, that there would be a pause. So they resumed their normal routine. They cleaned up, sparing a little magic to mend their clothes and clear the mess. They had a whetstone in the armoury, so they sharpened things, idly. They didn't need to. It felt like claws and teeth were enough, most days. Those couldn't be used against them, not in the typical ways they'd been warned about. But they felt a certain satisfaction when they held a sword, a knife, a mace.

This all completed, they waited. Senses trained for anything, literally anything, even something as small as a rustle in the world's magic, because there was absolutely nothing else. They could keep walking until she found them, but why? They must have covered miles by now. It seemed fruitless to walk. Giving themselves the illusion of rest was a kindness.

At some point, they got bored. Antsy, because it had been too long. They had taken to counting seconds, envisioning them as grains of sand in a timer. They hit a hundred thousand seconds. Once. Twice. Three times.

The sixth time, something snapped.

"Hey!" they yelled, standing up in a flurry. "Hello? You can't just leave me here! If you give up, at least have the fucking decency to tell me?"

They forced the sudden shrill and panicked tone down, away. It was too close to hysterical, the image that presented itself. But this was no kind of life. It was a limbo, they knew this. Had they doomed themselves to a lifetime in limbo?

"I'm serious," they said to absolutely nothing - and felt only the hint of a blush touch their cheeks. Please, they started to think, but they would not beg. Not yet. Not now. They were winning. She was being cowardly. Old fucking news.

They spun around slowly, assessing the horizon for anything, any sign of change. The stars were just as bright as ever.

"This isn't - we can talk about it." What was there to talk about? The rules were set, the game was in motion.

Clem stayed standing, chewing their lip. They couldn't stop thinking of -

No. No, they wouldn't think of her. It'd only upset things. They needed a clear head. Most likely, she had already moved on. They sighed, leaning slightly on their sword. "If you're giving up, I would like to go home." If she was anything like a worthy opponent, they'd have offered to say that she fought well. But she fought dirty, and the only reason they were here in the first place was revenge.

They waited.

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing. Their armour clanked loudly as they sat back down, frustrated, and rubbed at their forehead.

"Fuck."

---