He found out what that meant inside the first exchange. Every fight before this one had come in waves. Dravok would press, Trafalgar would answer, and there would be a beat afterward where both of them reset, and in that beat he could think. He'd never noticed how much he relied on the beat until the old man took it away from him. Dravok crossed the ground and kept coming, and the attack that opened the exchange ran into the next without a seam anywhere in it, and there was no point in any of it where Trafalgar was allowed to stop and choose.
He lasted about six seconds. His guard came up a fraction late because his head was still working out what was coming, and Dravok's plain sword went over the top of it and hammered him off his feet.
"You paused," Dravok said, walking after him. "Don't think. Answer."
