The Great Core's Paradox

With the way that the world slowed - or, more accurately, how her own perceptions sped up - there was more than enough time for Elara to take in her surroundings more fully. Across from her, hands wrapped around the shaft of a spear, was her opponent. It was a little strange, given how she had assumed - based on the scabbard at his side and the few remarks that he had made about his so-called dueling prowess - that he would be using a sword. While there was a sword at his side, the same type of training sword that Elara was using, it was sheathed.

“Should I have grabbed a spear, too?” she asked, one brow raising. “I didn’t realize you even used one of those things.”

The boy sputtered. “I told you that I preferred the spear over the sword. Twice! Were you not listening at all?”

“Oh. I guess not,” she answered, feeling slightly embarrassed. Yeah, she had tuned him out after the first bit, but she had still thought that she caught the general gist of what he’d been saying. Apparently she’d missed more than she thought. And now she was apparently going to be fighting with a sword versus someone who used a spear - and thus had a significantly further reach.

One-handed.

Without any armor.

Blunted spear or not, Elara doubted that the rules of the duel would look kindly on her taking any hits. And it wasn’t like she could just claim that she typically fought with automatic healing on her side, so any hits that landed shouldn’t actually count. Maybe Elara could claim that she’d normally be wearing armor that would let her either deflect or phase through hits, but she had her doubts that excuse would be allowed either.

It wouldn’t exactly be sporting.

Which left her with a problem. While Elara was sure that she could, with her ability to enhance her perception to the point that time felt like it slowed coupled with her generally enhanced proprioception and kinesthetic sense, dodge a fair few attacks, she couldn’t be positive. A spear would come in fast, and she’d have a hard time closing the distance.

“Can I have one, too?” Elara decided to ask, letting the world speed up again and starting to look around. She pointed at the nearest person, a man leaning against the edges of the ring behind her. “You, get me a spear!”

The man scurried off rather quickly, and Elara turned back towards her opponent. He had relaxed his grip, placing the butt of his spear against the ground and letting the shaft rest against his right shoulder. It was decently long, more suited for a two-handed grip than one, and was a close match in size to the enchanted spears that she had seen a few of the guards carrying around. The tip of the practice spear, however, was clearly blunt, with a dull and round edge. Dull enough that it would be more likely to bruise than pierce.

“...what are the rules to this thing, anyway?” she asked while they waited, in a slightly awkward attempt to fill the silence. She hadn’t bothered to ask before, since she had figured that it wouldn’t be much more complicated than ‘do things that would hurt or kill the other person if you were using a real sword’, but there was no reason not to find out for sure. They would have to wait for her spear, anyway.

“Three rounds. A round ends when one person lands five hits or what would be a killing blow. The judges will decide if something counts as a killing blow or not. If it’s a killing blow, the round ends automatically. If it’s a hit that wouldn’t kill, we step back and reset before continuing.”

Elara followed his gaze, noticing a set of three burly men that looked like they lived for fighting. The judges, she guessed.

“Not very realistic, is it? If we step back after every time we land a hit. In a real fight, landing a hit could lead to a killing blow,” she remarked.

The boy shrugged. “No, but it’s necessary. Otherwise people might be tempted to ignore a hit in order to return a killing blow and win the duel. Much easier to keep going with barely a hitch when a blunted spear stabs you in the leg versus a live blade. And it’s a bad habit to get into to let yourself take hits like that anyway, so we just don’t do it.”

Again, Elara’s personal advantages meant that she didn’t quite agree - she could heal or phase through a lot - but she nodded anyway.

“Makes sense,” she said.

The boy smiled. Oddly enough, it was a lot more palatable down in the ring. Much more earnest, less a smirk and more a genuine smile. The smile lessened when Elara’s handpicked helper returned with her blunted spear, turning into something more serious.

Spear in hand and sword resheathed, Elara soon turned towards her opponent again, pulling at her strings.

The world slowed once more.

Ewan’s blood was running hot, his heart pumping fast. The world felt as if it was at a standstill, in the same way that it always did before an exciting fight. The ring was much more crowded than it normally was, even compared to the recent times Sergeant Horik had come back from the mines and participated in a match or two - let alone for someone like Ewan. Not that he was weak - far from it - but…

He wasn’t a monster like that man was. Ewan had a good amount of skill with his spear - enough that he was sure that he could more than hold his own against a fair few of the strongest men of the Towers, even at his age. His father made sure of it, placing him with the best instructors that he could find, Sergeant Horik included. Not that Ewan learned much from the giant, beyond the terrifying truth that overwhelming strength made skill feel absolutely meaningless.

Sergeant Horik was well past that point, and the crowds that he drew reflected that. There was something about a potential maiming that always seemed to draw people in, like creatures to a Core.

The dueling area itself was relatively simple, a wide expanse riddled with a number of dueling rings, with seating at the very edges of each, along with even more seating encircling the area as a whole. Not every ring was the same. At the outer edges, closest to where Ewan had been sitting earlier, were the smaller rings, built for more close quarter combat, with very little space to move about. Ewan had specifically chosen to avoid those, not wanting to potentially get into a grappling match against a woman with unknown mana enhancements. If she happened to have increased strength, Ewan’s own lack of real mana enhancements would mean an instant loss.

No, he had chosen the ring right in the center, the one that all of the other rings in the arena orbited around. It was much longer than the others, having been built partly as a place for members of the guard to practice with their Windspears. That also meant that it was set lower into the floor than the other rings, sunken deep enough that any misses with their deadly blades of air wouldn’t be able to continue outwards and pierce through anyone using the other rings - or even the watching crowd.

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A good thing, since there were clear scratches in the surrounding wall where various attacks would have done just that.

The area was at maximum capacity, with the lack of Windspears in play causing people to even be filling the normally-empty lower level around the center ring. It was filled to the brim, seats packed and walking space unwalkable, having only gotten worse during the time the shadowguard’s sparring spear was being fetched. He wasn’t even sure how so many people had known to come. It really hadn’t taken that long to get ready, had it? Had word of a shadowguard fighting spread that quickly?

Ewanknew that they weren’t here for him, not exactly. Sure, they might be hoping that he would win - even with some people’s rather lackluster opinion of his father - but this many people wouldn’t have been watching any old duel that Ewan participated in. He was good - some might say great, even, especially for his lack of a mana enhancement - but not at that level.

Enough to try bragging to a pretty shadowguard, but not enough to feel no worry about the impromptu duel it’d led to. Maybe things would change once he managed to hit the threshold for a proper mana enhancement - and especially if he got lucky with what it turned out to be - but not quite yet. For now, he knew that there was another reason for why so many people were watching.

And it wasn’t him. Not for the first time, Ewan cursed himself for caving into the pressure and refusing to back down in front of his friends, though he made sure to keep any sign of regret off of his face.

Regret that he was already struggling with. There were stories about Virtun’s shadowguards and their annual visits, and - though they were all different - two things remained true throughout.

One: You didn’t want to piss them off.

Two: You really didn’t want to piss them off.

He was really hoping that he hadn’t pissed this one off. Even talking to her had been a bit of a risk, but the circumstances demanded it.

She was really pretty, with that hint of the unattainable - or rather should-not-attainable, given how crazy and dangerous she probably was - that Ewan found more than a little irresistible.

Plus, Ewan was a bit stupid sometimes. And he was even more stupid for claiming to Grant and Sebas that he was going to get her in his bed close enough that she could hear. Though he didn’t really understand how she heard it, with the noise around them and how far away he’d been. But she had.

That could have been bad, if she’d taken things worse than she had. Sure, she’d challenged him to a duel and Ewan might be about to get a beating, but at least she hadn’t just stabbed him! She probably could have, and gotten away with it too. Sure, his father would have complained, and his status asthe White Tower’s Chief Treasurer might have forced a more pronounced apology for it than most others could get out of Virtun’s shadowguards, but at the end of the day…

The White Towers were under Virtun’s thumb. The Wind Core was the main thing that kept the White Towers the de facto head of Erandur, and both parties were well aware of where it had come from - and how easily it could be taken away again. Something that had been threatened more than once when the tithes of xenlite nearly came up short. A little bit of offended stabbing would be waved away in the face of that power imbalance.

Anything to keep what they had.

Ewan knew his father and his fellow officials had done far worse than forgive a little stabbing in that regard. He tried not to think about those things too much. He mostly succeeded.

At least the terms of the duel meant that she probably wouldn’t do anything too bad if it turned out that Ewan was outmatched. She had said that he would have to do anything that she asked for a day if she won, so he would have to be alive and healthy enough to do that. That small bit of safety was the only reason that Ewan had let himself succumb to the pressure and agree to the duel in the first place.

Well, that and the promise of a date if he won.

There was a chance that he could actually win, right?

Right. She was down one arm, and - from the way she was looking at her spear - didn’t seem too familiar with the weapon. And while that made Ewan question why she’d asked for a spear in the first place, it helped to give him a little more confidence.

He narrowed his eyes at her, watching the way that she twirled her spear. Not really something that should be done. It looked flashy, but it wasn’t exactly useful in a fight. Still, he couldn’t help but notice how, despite her uncertainty when staring at the weapon, she herself moved with surprising dexterity.

It was something that he’d noticed as she’d walked over. Even with one arm tied behind her back, she moved with a deadly sort of grace - one that made every step seem as perfectly balanced as possible. Beyond what should have been possible.

Probably not a strength enhancement, then, Ewan thought to himself, fingers flexing around the shaft of his spear as he waited for the duel’s countdown to begin. It meant that his fears of a grapple were likely unfounded, though he still would have chosen the largest ring regardless.

It was just common sense to give yourself as much space as possible when using a spear, even without the power of a Windspear to rely on.

The countdown began, and the crowd around the ring fell to a hush. Sweat dripped down Ewan’s brow, and his muscles tensed, ready to leap into action.

That was all that saved him.

The moment that the countdown ended, his opponent dashed forward, one hand still tied behind her back and the other holding her spear at her side. She moved faster than he’d expected. Not so fast that to make Ewan think that her speed was especially enhanced, but fast enough that to make him worry; in the end, it was less about how fast she moved, and more about how unnaturally perfect those movements actually were.

Like not a single twitch of her muscles was wasted.

The shadowguard’s spear shot forward, and Ewan only barely managed to jerk his head out of the way. The thrust itself was the only time where Ewan could see something wrong with the way his opponent moved; he absent-mindedly noticed that her hand was a little too far forward on the spear’s shaft. She didn’t actually know the right place to grip it.

Which made it all the more impressive how quickly she was putting him on the back foot.

Ewan hopped as the shadowguard’s leg kicked outwards, trying to sweep him while he was off balance, and rapidly brought his own spear to bear, flicking it forward with far more practice than his opponent had.

She dodged by the barest of margins, and Ewan couldn’t tell if the close call was more of a testament to his skill and speed or her own; she reacted fast. Regardless, he knew that he needed to press his advantage while she was still working out the kinks in using a spear.

The woman backstepped, and Ewan followed; a quick stutter-step led into a leaping one-handed thrust as his hand shifted further back along the spear’s shaft, extending his reach and keeping Ewan well away from any counterattack due to the shadowguard’s improperly-positioned grip. He saw her eyes widen midleap, caught off-guard and not expecting the sudden attack.

And yet, despite it all, she almost dodged; the leaping thrust, something that - with its combination of surprise, speed, and reach - really should have required a shield to have any chance of surviving, only managed to just barely graze the outside edge of her already-tied arm - and even then, Ewan had a feeling that it was mostly the inability to move that part of her body that allowed him to pull through.

“Hit!” one of the judges called, the crowd breaking into a raucous cheer. Ewan came to a halt, breathing much harder than he should have from the few brief seconds the beginning of the duel had lasted, the intense focus required getting to him. He stepped back, resetting his position. “First point of the first round goes to Ewan!”

Despite his minor victory, Ewan was only becoming more worried. With her disadvantages - her clear lack of any practice with a spear, along with her tied-up arm - that attack should have done significantly more than graze her. He had gone for a ‘killing blow’ while she was still unfamiliar with her weapon and his own, aiming for her heart so that he could quickly win the first round and give himself an advantage that might let him win the whole thing.

Instead, his attempt at a death blow had landed in a way that really only counted as being worth anything within the rules of a duel. Outside of that, it was less than nothing; a slight nick on unarmored flesh at best. Not to mention before that, Ewan had nearly taken an immediate thrust to the face despite the shadowguard’s lack of familiarity with her weapon.

And even as they reset, he could already see the shadowguard staring at Ewan’s hands, readjusting her hand positioning and correcting the way she held her spear to match his own.

He huffed out a sigh, knowing with certainty that things were about to get a whole lot worse.