[One year and eight months later, in the middle of Lymur's fourth semester at Xyrus Academy]
"So how did I end up here in a ring with the two of you again?"
Lymur stood in the center of the arena enclosed by a barrier with his hands in his pockets, looking between Cynthia on his left and Vanesy Glory on his right like he was trying to retrace his steps from the last hour.
"Hahaha! You agreed," Vanesy said as she laughed. She had two large swords already out, resting easy on her shoulders, and the eager face of someone who had been looking forward to this for a while. She was tall, dark-haired, moved like someone who had spent most of her adult life in dungeons and hadn't slowed down since. "Ten minutes ago. You said, and I quote, 'sure, why not.'"
"Really? Hmm... well, that does sound like me," Lymur admitted.
Outside the barrier, every visible seat in the venue was packed. Senior students shoulder to shoulder along the railing, some of them standing on benches for a better view.
Three semesters of "have you seen Brightburn fight" and "what do you think his actual ceiling is" had apparently reached a breaking point sometime last week, and then Vanesy had walked up to him in the faculty lounge and said she wanted to do a demonstration for her Team Fighting Mechanics class and Cynthia had been standing right there and somehow it had become this.
The mock fight was a big enough deal that classes had even been suspended for the afternoon. There was, reportedly, a betting pool running somewhere in the east dormitory building. Lymur had heard it was also being broadcast to the administrative wing.
He looked up at the crowd for a second. That's genuinely half the school, isn't it?
Lymur looked back at Cynthia. She'd produced her wand at some point, holding it loose at her side, her other hand clasped behind her back. She looked like she was about to conduct a seminar.
"You don't have to do this, Seabird," he said. "You can sit this one out."
"I founded this institution," Cynthia replied pleasantly. "I think I can manage."
"That's not a no, but okay."
Vanesy rolled her shoulders and the swords came off her shoulders and she settled into a stance that was completely relaxed and completely ready at the same time. "Can we start? Some of my students have homework."
"Sure," Lymur said. "Ladies first."
Vanesy charged. She was fast and she came in low with both swords, fire already running up the blades on her right and sand beginning to gather around the left. Lymur sidestepped the first swing, somewhat felt the heat off the blade, and was already watching her follow-through to read the second.
She adjusted mid-swing with a faster response time than he'd expected.
He stepped back from the second blade and it caught air, and then the sand detonated sideways as she reversed, filling the space around him with a wall of glass shards that formed mid-air from the combined fire-sand reaction and came in from three angles at once.
Lymur raised two fingers and drew a quick Incision line across the front of the glass spread. The shards hit the line and divided cleanly along it, the halves falling away on either side of him, not a scratch.
"What was that!? That's so~ cool," someone in the crowd shouted.
Lymur lowered his hand. "Not bad. Is that the Glass Deviant thing?"
"Yes," Vanesy said, already repositioning.
"I've read about it. First time I've seen it up close." He sounded genuinely interested. "Can you do it at larger scale?"
"Would you like to find out?"
"I do, actually."
Vanesy obliged. The glass output tripled, spreading in a wide arc that covered most of the arena floor, shards layering into a dense field between them. It was impressive and the kind of technique that would have pinned most opponents into a corner.
Lymur walked through it anyway.
He unleashed Incision lines running in fast succession in front of every step, parting the glass before it arrived, the whole field parting around him like he was walking through a curtain. He was still moving at a leisurely, absolutely confident pace.
Vanesy recalibrated. She came back in close and this time augmented, both swords faster and heavier, the glass on the blades extending the reach by half a meter.
Meanwhile, Cynthia had moved to his left flank.
Wind gathered around her soundlessly and four compact twisters formed to her sides and shot outward in a cross pattern aimed to converge on Lymur's position.
Lymur looked at the incoming twisters, then at Vanesy closing in from the front.
This one's decent pincer, he thought.
He picked a direction — straight at Vanesy — and accelerated.
She didn't expect the speed increase. He closed the remaining distance faster than the swords could adjust and got inside her guard, both her blades momentarily useless at that range, and drove a palm into her shoulder. Not hard enough to hurt her seriously, but certainly hard enough to send her sliding back a dozen meters across the arena floor.
The twisters hit the space he'd just left and tore up the ground where he'd been standing.
Vanesy had caught herself and was already back in action. The crowd was very loud now.
Cynthia sent the soundwave next. One moment, the air was normal, and the next, Lymur felt a pressure in his skull that was specifically designed to disorient and built to escalate into something considerably worse. It was subtle and elegant and clearly the product of someone who had been doing this for a long time.
He tilted his head slightly.
"That one's itchy," he said. "The sound thing."
He reached toward a point in the space to Cynthia's right and triggered Confluence's space compression, pulling the designated zone inward. About two meters to her right, aiming at nothing but open air and part of the arena floor.
The zone collapsed inward with a sound like the world inhaling and the floor in that spot crumpled into a dense point and the shockwave from the compression hit Cynthia sideways and knocked her off her footing without touching her.
She stumbled, caught herself, and looked at the crater in the arena floor, then at Lymur.
"You weren't aiming at me?" she asked.
"Obviously not." He looked offended. "You'd implode. We don't want that now, do we?"
"He's using it as crowd control," Finch, Lymur's former student during his first semester as a professor, said loudly from his bench railing.
Vanesy came back in for the third time, and this time she was fighting differently. She was adapting, working with what she knew about his close-range response, trying to find a crack. Lymur could see the thinking behind it and respected it.
He blocked the first sword with his forearm, redirected the second with an open hand, and when she spun for a follow-through, he caught her wrist — gently, but firmly — and stopped the attack entirely.
She looked at her wrist. Then at him.
"Hi," Lymur said with a flirting smile.
"Hi," she replied awkwardly.
She threw an elbow with her free arm. He leaned back from it, released her wrist, and stepped away.
"You're actually fun to fight," he said.
"Please don't compliment me right now," Vanesy said, breathing harder.
Behind him, Cynthia had recovered and the wind was building again — more this time, a full wall forming between her and Lymur, thick enough to stop most things. She paired it with another soundwave, layered on top of the wind to carry further and hit at a different frequency.
Lymur turned to face it.
He pointed at the wall.
Incision, one long horizontal line across the full width of it. The wind wall divided and the two halves peeled away from the center and the soundwave traveled down the gap he'd cut and dispersed into nothing.
"—Woaaaaaahhh~!—" The crowd made a cheering noise.
He walked through the gap toward Cynthia at a normal pace.
"Okay," Cynthia said, with remarkable calm for someone who just had their technique cut in half. "That's fair. I should've expected that."
Vanesy hit him from behind.
Both swords, full augment, everything she had, the glass extending the blades to nearly double their usual reach. It was her best strike of the whole fight and she'd timed it perfectly while his attention was on Cynthia.
And it landed.
The sound of the impact hit the crowd first. Then the dust from the force of it, billowing out from the point of contact.
Everyone went quiet.
The dust settled.
Lymur was standing in the exact spot he'd been in, his jacket slightly out of place. He reached up and straightened his collar.
"That was your best one!" He wasn't being mean about it. He sounded genuine. "The timing especially."
Vanesy stared at him.
"Your arm okay?" he asked.
She looked down at her sword arm, which had absorbed significant recoil from hitting something that hadn't moved. She flexed her hand slowly. "...Fine."
"Excellent." He looked between her and Cynthia. "Should we keep going or — "
Cynthia raised one hand. "I think that we have demonstrated sufficient material for the class."
The crowd above exploded.
Vanesy stood in the middle of the arena looking at Lymur for a long moment. Then she put her swords on her back and started laughing.
"You absolute menace," she said.
"I held back," Lymur said.
"I know," Vanesy said. "That's the part that's funny. It's annoying but it's funny."
He looked up at the crowd. Most of them were on their feet.
Lymur looked at the two small Confluence craters he'd made in the arena floor. Then at the glass-covered ground from Vanesy's spread. Then at the cut in the air where the wind wall had been, still faintly visible as a disturbance in the light.
Made a bit of a mess, he thought.
"Someone's going to have to fix that floor," he said, to no one in particular.
"Yes," Cynthia said. "You."
"That's hardly fair."
"You made the craters."
"You agreed to do this."
"I agreed to a demonstration," Cynthia said. "Not an excavation."
Vanesy was still laughing anyway.
◢◣◢◣◢◣
The wyvern, Avier, landed on the Floating Castle's outer terrace with a sound like a sail catching wind, and Cynthia stepped off its back before it had fully settled, adjusting her hat.
Avier ruffled his feathers at this and offered a complaint. "That was farther than I've ever travelled," the wyvern said.
"You're fine," she told him, and walked toward the terrace doors.
Virion was already there, leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed. His white hair was loose today, longer than she remembered from their last visit, and his beard had gotten more unruly.
"You've gotten worse at dismounting," he said.
"Hello to you too, Virion."
He smiled and stepped aside to let her in. "You look well."
"I am well." She walked past him into the warmth of the corridor. "You look like you haven't seen a comb in a month."
"Three weeks," he said. "I've been counting."
They went inside.
The sitting room he led her to was disorderly, looking like it was used by someone who read a lot and put things down wherever they wanted. There were books on every surface, a half-empty cup of something on the windowsill, two chairs pulled close to a low fire. And a view of expansive clouds outside the window.
Cynthia sat. Virion poured tea without asking and handed her a cup, then dropped into the other chair.
They started talking then.
About Virion's granddaughter first — Tessia, who was at Xyrus Academy now, doing well by all accounts. About his son Alduin and the headaches of running a kingdom you'd handed off but still occasionally had opinions about. About a fishing trip Virion had taken three weeks ago, which he described in extensive detail. About someone they'd both known from the war years who had apparently moved to a coastal town and opened a bakery, which Virion found hilarious and Cynthia found touching.
It was the rhythm of two people who had known each other long enough that the conversation didn't need to go anywhere specific to be worthwhile.
Eventually, it turned to the council.
"The announcement is confirmed for next month about the Triunion Council," Virion said, setting his cup down.
"How's Blaine taking it?"
"He favors it, so he's taking it fine." Virion leaned back. "His wife is more cautious. She's right to be, but she'll come around."
"And the Greysunders?"
"They're unusually motivated. Probably the most motivated of the three, which either means they're the most prepared or they have the most to gain." He shrugged. "Probably both."
Cynthia looked at the fire for a moment. "And the Lances?"
"There are already six total, six of the current eight Special Grades. Pairs of two for each race, formally under their respective rulers but operating in service of Dicathen as a whole." His tone was matter-of-fact. "It's the right structure. Keeps accountability clear without really fragmenting command."
"It's a good structure," Cynthia agreed. "Did anyone discuss Lymur?"
Virion's expression didn't change exactly, which made Cynthia wonder if he expected her to ask about it.
"The Lance roster is filled," he said. "Six positions, six appointees."
Cynthia looked at him funny. "There's no rule that says six."
"Well... it's the agreed number."
"Agreed informally." She kept her eyes on him. "And there's no rule that the Lance position requires the artifact binding. That's tradition, not law."
Virion scratched the back of his head. "Alright," he eventually said. "Yes. It came up."
"And?"
"And it didn't stay civil for long." He looked at the fire. "Everyone agreed he was too strong to ignore. That was actually the easy part. The argument was about everything else." He paused. "He's unpredictable. He operates on his own logic, which is — consistent, apparently, but not always legible to other people. And he's not bound to any ruler. The Lances are bound. That's what makes them Lances."
"So they're afraid of him?"
Virion glanced at her. "They didn't use that word."
"And what word did they use?"
He didn't answer that.
"They'll try to bring him in for temporary work," he said instead. "For operations and short-term contracts. His strength is too valuable to leave on the table entirely, but permanent appointment — " He shook his head. "The consensus was no."
Cynthia was quiet for a second. The fire popped.
"I think that's a grave mistake," she said.
Virion raised an eyebrow. "You're arguing for giving a position of formal military authority to a man who killed an AA-class adventurer because he personally decided it was warranted."
"I'm arguing that in a war — if there will be one — unpredictability is a damn well good asset, not a liability." She set her cup down. "The other continent has had time to prepare. Whatever they send, it'll be built around what they know about how we work." She looked at Virion. "Lymur doesn't work the way anyone expects. He doesn't even work the way he expects. That's not a flaw in a war, Virion. That's the strongest weapon."
Virion studied her. "It almost sounds like you're afraid of him too."
"I am," she said, without hesitation. "I'm not joking, Virion. I've watched him for years. I know his strength, probably better than anyone, and yet even I don't know the ceiling of it. I've never seen the ceiling." She picked up her cup again. "But I also know he's rational. He's smarter than he presents. And I know he cares about Dicathen more than he would ever admit out loud." She looked at her tea. "He'd be terrible at following orders. He'd be a political nightmare. But he might genuinely be the most important asset Dicathen has if things go wrong."
Virion was quiet for a while, looking at the fire.
"You're not wrong," he said finally.
"I know."
"But it won't change the council's decision."
"I know that too." She finished her tea. "I just wanted to say it."
"This Lymur. I haven't met him."
"No."
"Arthur has. Apparently."
"A few times, yes."
"Arthur doesn't talk about him much," Virion added. "Which means Arthur either doesn't know what to say, or knows exactly what to say and has decided not to. Either way, that's interesting."
"Yes," Cynthia said. "It sure is."
Virion shook his head, still smiling. He reached for the teapot and refilled her cup without being asked, the same way he always had.
"Keep an eye on him, Cynthia."
"I intend to."