"Who are you? A rebel?" asked the knight.
At the far end of the cave stood a tall man in dark robes, sword already drawn. No fear on him at all, not even a little. "Throne's dog. You've got no business here, so hand over the girl and go." His blade hummed as he said it, purple light bleeding through the steel slow and strange, like dye dropped in water.
The knight drew his own sword. The royal emblem on the flat of it caught the crystal glow for just a moment. "Looks like even garbage needs taking care of."
"You really want to fight me." Not a question, more like the man was almost amused by it. "I've been given the power of the greatest dark swordsman who ever lived."
The knight looked at him the same way the whole time. "Who told you that. They lied. That power isn't even close to great."
Something in the man's face changed then. His eyes went white and he was already moving before Leon had registered it.
The swords hit each other with a sound like a hammer swung hard against an anvil, this sharp violent clang that bounced off all the crystal walls at once and came back twice as loud.
This strength didn't come from training. You can feel the difference just from the first hit.
The knight pushed him back, nothing fancy about it, just raw force. "Virelle. Take the kid and go."
"No, I can help with—"
"The kid could get hurt." He didn't look at her when he said it. "And he's strong."
The man came again. Two more crashes, each heavier and messier than the last one, steel dragging against steel in a way that sounded less like a fight and more like something being slowly torn apart.
"Fine. I'll play along with this."
"This power can crush anyone," the man said, grinning now, the purple flow around his blade going darker and thicker. He pushed and actually made the knight give back a full step. "You see that? You're already losing. He told me you would be."
Then the gold came off the knight. Slow, rolling off him like heat off stone that's been sitting in the sun all day. His sword steadied in his grip. He said one word.
"Draen."
"That won't even—"
The knight moved and Leon's brain simply didn't catch it. There was before and there was after and nothing in between. The blade found the arm at the joint and the noise it produced was not anything like a sword going through something cleanly. It was thick and wet, the sound a green branch makes when you bend it past the point it wants to go, and then after that the flat heavy slap of the arm landing on stone.
Leon forgot to breathe for a second. "I didn't... he didn't even..."
Silence for half a moment. The man looked down.
Then the screaming started. Long and broken and animal, the kind of sound that fills a space completely and leaves no room for anything else.
He folded to his knees. Dark blood poured out of the stump steadily. The knight stood over him with his sword still up and the gold still burning off him.
"You didn't earn it. Doesn't matter how you got it, stolen or handed to you, same thing either way. That power was never yours." He let the screaming go on. Waited it out until it dropped down into something quieter and more desperate sounding. "When it breaks it won't hold. When it counts it won't answer you. What I have I put together myself, every piece of it, over a long time. That's the only kind that actually works."
The man's eyes went red. All of it, the pain and the rage and something like shame, sitting there in his face at once. He got his good hand back around his sword somehow and dragged it up off the ground. "We will still win." He came forward again. Unsteady. Still bleeding. Still going.
The knight settled his weight.
"You need a beating."
He swung. The man ducked it and immediately turned toward Leon. "One of you dies right now at least!"
Leon's legs stopped working under him. Just gone.
Virelle stepped in front of him.
"Why can't I—" The man locked up completely. Every muscle in his body seized mid-stride, from the neck all the way down, like he'd been turned to wood.
"That's my flow." Virelle's voice was level. "Roots." They came up out of the cave floor, dark and thick as old rope, shaped like the base of some enormous tree that had grown down here in the dark for centuries. They moved up around him one thing at a time. Ankles. Knees. Waist. Chest. He was completely held. She looked back at Leon briefly. "Thank me later. Stay back." Then toward the knight: "Master. Enough?"
"Yes."
A moment of nothing.
"May the goddess have mercy on your soul."
The cave went quiet enough that you could hear the crystals again, that faint low hum they put out.
The knight walked toward him. Like he had all the time in the world, like there was nowhere else he had to be. The gold aura had settled into something that felt heavier than it looked, the way the air gets in the moments right before a storm actually arrives and you realize it's too late to go inside. The man couldn't do a thing. Could only stand there in the roots and watch him come closer one step at a time. His remaining hand was shaking where it pressed against the tendrils. His mouth opened at some point, maybe he tried to say something, beg or threaten or bargain, hard to tell which and it made no real difference.
The knight raised his sword and brought it down in one motion that had no hesitation or anger anywhere in it, just a thing being finished, and the sound it made was deep and heavy, an axe going all the way through the heart of a thick log, that kind of finality to it, and then after that the smaller quieter sound of the head meeting the stone floor, and then after that just the cave again. Just the hum and somewhere the crystals dripping and the purple glow fading slowly out of the blade that was lying on the ground.
The roots loosened. The body went down.
"Draen. Druex." The gold left him as he said the words.
"Draen... druex," Leon said quietly. "What does it mean?"
"Don't worry about it. We're leaving. We got what we came for and those crystals are finished now."
Leon walked out behind them. He kept looking at Virelle on the way back without really meaning to.
"Stop that. It's strange."
"Your flow," Leon said. "You just froze him completely. Like nothing."
"It looks better than it actually is. It has problems."
"What problems. You stopped a grown man running full speed. You'd be an incredible person to fight next to."
She didn't answer for a while. Kept her eyes on the path.
"Carry the bags, donkey."
Though the corner of her mouth moved. Just a small amount. Just enough to notice if you were watching.
She looked almost happy about it.
"They gave me 14 grals, Kael. Is that decent?"
Kael looked at him for a moment in the way you look at someone who has no idea what they're holding. "14 grals is a month of food for a whole family. You should be grateful honestly. I still don't understand why they paid you that much just to carry things."
"I worked hard," Leon said, completely meaning it.
Kael shook his head once. "Tomorrow again?"
"Yeah. Same thing."
A voice came for Kael from somewhere further down the road. "Sleep well then." He left.
Two young men nearby had been listening to all of it. Around eighteen, maybe a bit younger. One of them watched Leon go with his jaw set tight. "14 grals. One day carrying bags." He spat on the ground. "Some people just stumble into things, it's not fair."
Leon was asleep almost before he finished lying down.
He didn't know how much time went by before something woke him up.
The door. Someone pushing it open very carefully, the old wood making that low reluctant groan that it makes when you try to rush it.
He didn't move. Stayed exactly where he was, eyes barely open, watching the dark of the room.
"Quickly. Find the grals and take anything else that looks worth grabbing."
"Where is it though, come on—"
They're robbing me.
He waited. When one of them got close to the corner where he'd left the money he sat up off the bed, took the steel mug from the table beside him and swung it hard into the back of the man's skull.
It made a bad sound. Dense and dull, the sort you feel somewhere behind your own ears when you hear it. Blood came fast, soaking into his hair and tracking down the back of his neck. The man stumbled into the wall and put his hands out to stop himself.
"You." He turned around, one hand to his head, eyes gone strange. "What was that. I'll kill you for that."
Leon swung again.
The robber just moved under it. No panic, nothing, just stepped out of the way.
What.
He tried again the same way, desperate, no real plan to it. The robber let it pass him, stepped in, and hit Leon once. A short punch, hard, the sound of it like a soaked rag slapped flat against stone, and Leon's head snapped to the side.
Then he was on the floor. A boot hit his ribs. Then his side. The dark came up.
He woke up tied to a chair in a room that smelled like rot and wet stone. Hands behind his back, cloth stuffed into his mouth. A slum somewhere. The second robber was up now, old blood dried into his hair, with a metal rod in his hand.
"Found them by the way. He had the grals stuffed inside his shirt." He laughed a bit.
The rod came down across Leon's leg. The sound it made against bone was a flat sharp crack and the pain that came after it was pure white, just white with no shape to it. He couldn't scream properly. Just that muffled wet noise into the cloth while his eyes filled up and the edges of the room went soft.
Why can't I get my hands free. Why can't I do a single thing.
The rod lifted. Leon threw his whole weight backwards, taking the chair down with him onto the floor, and the rod missed him by barely anything. He lay there on his back still tied to it and pulled at the rope until he felt his wrists go wet.
"Think you're going somewhere?" The robber walked over without any hurry. He put his boot on Leon's face and leaned into it, pushing his cheek and nose down into the dirt floor. Leon felt warmth from his nose. From his chin too. The room kept getting darker at the edges.
Someone. Anyone. Please.
The rod went up again.
"Why... why won't my arm move."
"Mine either. What's going on."
Both of them stuck completely still.
Then a voice at the doorway. Flat. Not particularly worried about any of it.
"Donkey. You still breathing in there?"