Chapter 728: Countering Crosswind Weave [Bonus - ]

Chapter 728: Countering Crosswind Weave [Bonus Chapter]

"Oof!"

Silas took a half-step back with his boots skidding over the wet tiles and his hand tightening on the leather wrap of his broadsword.

The air in his lungs sputtered and tis golden-ringed eyes snapped wide as he stared at the steel blade hovering inches off his flank.

’He hooked it,’ Silas thought with his mind racing to take the trajectory apart. ’His shoulder didn’t drop... The wind bent the blade in midswing.’

Across the short distance Valerius was grinning like a feral hound that had just stolen a prime steak from an imperial banquet.

His brass-blond hair was soaked with sweat, his golden eyes blazed with triumphant fury, and his chest heaved under his azure tunic.

’I landed it!’ Valerius roared inwardly with his heart slamming like a sledgehammer. ’I actually tagged him clean! The shearing currents... they work! They really work!’

"Don’t space out on me now, Silas!" he hollered, voice cracking with pure competitive joy. "We’re just getting into the meat of it!"

BANG!

He didn’t retreat to admire his handiwork.

He surged straight forward on a burst of emerald wind and closed the two paces between them before Silas could draw a full breath.

’I’m calling it Crosswind Weave...’

The Crosswind Weave roared to life around his arms and blade.

Opposing streams of green mana screamed in tight counter-rotating spirals with one rushing toward the tip of his sword and the other coiling backward toward his elbow.

The air whistled with an unnatural shrieking pitch and vibrated so hard that the water on the floor atomized into fine white vapor.

Valerius threw a straight thrust at Silas’s sternum.

Silas kept his wrist loose, stepped back half an inch, and set the flat of his blade to take it.

SHING!

Halfway through the lunge the contrary streams sheared.

ZZZZZZZT!

The blade didn’t hold its line at all... The opposing currents dragged the steel three inches left and snapped it into a vicious horizontal hook aimed straight at Silas’s jaw.

’What the hell—?!’

His head ducked on pure ingrained reflex.

WHOOSH!

The edge sheared through the air right above his dark bangs with a hiss like tearing silk, and the backdraft cut a few loose hairs clean off his scalp!

Valerius didn’t stop to reset since he didn’t need to.

The counter-clockwise current around his elbow snapped outward and reversed the momentum of his swing without a single planted heel or a pulse from his core.

’This is a good technique... I see most of my training has been guiding me in this direction.’

Perhaps it was now that he was realizing it but all of the research that he had done up until this point... It was all converging at this point and Valerius was still a long way to go but perhaps... With Crosswind Weave, he could match Sera?

CRACK!

The arming sword whipped back from the opposite side with wind howling along its edge and the whole blade trembling with the strain of the reversal, cutting up toward Silas’s exposed ribs from a blind impossible angle.

Silas dropped his guard and caught it on the forte.

CLANG! SKRRRRRR!

Steel screeched on steel, but the instant he tried to bear down and deflect the blow, the shearing winds around Valerius’s weapon went wild...

The contrary currents ground against his broadsword like two spinning sawblades, twisted his wrist outward, and tore his guard wide open.

BANG!

Valerius brought his left fist around with a dense knot of emerald wind wrapped over his knuckles and slammed a heavy cross into Silas’s mesh-covered shoulder.

WHAM!

Silas stumbled sideways with his boots splashing through a puddle and his teeth grinding as the impact rattled his collarbone and sent a dull throb down his arm.

A ring of spray jumped up around his heels.

’He’s not fighting with his body anymore,’ Silas realized in a flash of analysis with his eyes burning gold. ’He’s letting the opposing streams steer the weapon so the sword moves before his joints even rotate!’

Up in the mezzanine Morwenna leaned over the iron railing with both hands as her stormy eyes were wide and her knuckles turned white.

’That blond popinjay...’ she thought with a cold sweat breaking out on the back of her neck. ’Where did he pull that dirty trick from?! The blade’s tacking against the gale! It’s like a ship turning into the wind without throwing out an anchor!’

Mia sat on the rail beside her, small boots swinging in frantic excited bounces and pointed ears twitching wildly.

’Oho!’ Mia cheered in her head, green eyes sparkling with ancient delight. ’Look at my Master go! Tearing the vectors apart to make new ones! Very clever and very rude but very flashy!’

Down on the floor Valerius was pressing the advantage with everything his Purple Core had.

CLANG! BANG! SHING!

It was pure chaotic close-quarters boxing with steel and wind, a storm of blows packed into a space no wider than a doorway.

Valerius stayed glued to Silas’s chest and never gave him more than three feet of breathing room.

Every strike arrived from a vector that defied the logic of his stance... A downward cleave snapped sideways into a rising undercut... A thrust toward the hip jerked upward toward the neck.

ZZZZZZZT!

CRACK!

The flat of his sword clipped Silas’s forearm, a backhanded swipe raked the mesh over his stomach with a shower of sparks and a compressed burst of wind slapped his jaw and sent a spray of sweat flying!

WHAP! CLANG! THUD!

A hooked cut rang off Silas’s shoulder guard... A rising slash skated across his forearm and left a bright scratch on the mesh... A wind-wrapped elbow shot out of nowhere and clipped his ribs.

CRACK! SKRRK! WHUMP!

’I’ve got him on the back foot!’ Valerius thought, golden eyes burning with manic intensity. ’Keep the weave tight! Don’t let him breathe! Don’t let him find the center!’

Silas took three quick steps back and absorbed the barrage on his blade, his vest as well as his forearms.

Water sprayed off his boots with every retreating stride as the floor under them rang like a struck drum!

CLANG! THUD! SCREEECH! BANG! WHAM! CLANG!

His breathing stayed slow and deep and perfectly even. The gold rings in his eyes flared with unyielding brilliance... He had taken the hits and he had felt the bizarre shearing torque of the opposing streams against his own steel.

’But it’s nothing I can’t beat.’

He had measured the speed of the redirection, the lag of the contrary currents, and the exact moment the two winds collided before snapping the blade off-axis.

’It’s quite clever though...’ Silas thought with his mind feeling crystal clear. ’It bends the angles... It breaks standard guards but no matter how fast the wind shears, the weapon still has mass and every current leaves an eddy.’

The rhythm of the fight shifted under his boots as every fraction of an inch he yielded was no longer a retreat.

Valerius threw a rapid corkscrewing thrust at his collarbone, the wind twisting the steel into a spiraling bore that drilled through the air with a high thin whine.

VRRRRRRRRR! SKRRR-CLANG!

Silas didn’t parry it head-on... He angled the tip of his broadsword down and caught the arming sword at the forte, and instead of stiffening his arm, he let his shoulder drop and his wrist hang like a loose hinge.

’Alright, flow.’

The broadsword yielded to the spiral, soaked up the twisting torque of the Crosswind Weave, and slid it down toward the floor.

The steel shrieked as the edge skipped across the gray dampening stone and threw up a burst of pale friction sparks.

’What—?!’ Valerius’s eyes went wide as his sword plunged into the empty floor.

Silas stepped in and he drove the heel of his palm straight into Valerius’s breastplate with the crisp brutal simplicity of a brawler.

THWACK!

The mesh armor rattled and Valerius flew back two full strides with his boots plowing twin furrows through the water and kicking up a long arc of spray that glittered under the floodlights.

SKRRRRSH!

"You’re relying on the trick, Val!" Silas called out with his voice sounding sharp over the hiss of steam. "The moment you fall in love with the redirection, your recovery gets sloppy!"

Valerius gritted his teeth, golden eyes narrowing with stubborn fury.

"Then try dodging this one!"

BANG!

He kicked off the stone in an Air Hopping burst that drove his boots into a low slide.

His left hand flashed as the runes of Zephyr’s Loop burning bright blue, and he triggered the Crosswind Weave across the full length of his lower body and blade at once.

Two counter-rotating cyclones wrapped his waist and legs and howled across the tiles with a noise like a pair of drills chewing stone... As he slid, the opposing currents dragged him across the floor in a jagged violent zigzag that made his silhouette stutter like a broken projection.

WHOOSH!

He rose from the slide in an explosive upward arc with the hip cyclone spinning his body like a top with the arming sword whipping toward Silas’s ribs in a strike that seemed to come from behind Silas’s own shoulder.

’Outside hook from a low entry, Heh.’ Silas read instantly. ’He’s using the hip cyclone to whip the upper body.’

He didn’t try to follow the blade’s erratic path with his eyes.

He trusted the weight in his hands and the water circulating through his meridians as he stepped directly forward into the teeth of the cut, ducked a hair under the whirling edge with the wind roaring past his ear, and cut the radius of Valerius’s swing in half before the contrary streams could reach peak speed.

CRACK!

He brought the hilt of his broadsword down and smashed the heavy steel pommel into the flat of Valerius’s incoming blade, just above the crossguard.

The strike broke the weapon’s lever-arm before the wind could hook it and the pommel rang against the steel like a hammer on an anvil.

CLANG! SKRRRRRR!

The shearing currents detonated prematurely between their chests and blew out a ring of violent pressurized air that fluttered Silas’s jacket and flung Valerius’s sword arm wide at a strained awkward angle.

KRAKOOOM!

The blast rolled across the arena floor and rattled the blast-glass of the mezzanine.

’He stepped inside the turn?!’ Valerius’s thoughts screamed in horror as his shoulder wrenched under the feedback.

"My turn..." Silas muttered.

He took control of the pocket.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

He hammered the blond’s guard from one side to the other and never let the rhythm slow.

Each cut landed a hair faster than the last as Valerius’s boots dragged over the wet tile, his heels scraped, his breath tore out of him in short ragged bursts.

CLANG!

A short crisp snap to the shoulder as Valerius barely got his guard up, and the impact staggered his footing with a jolt that rattled his teeth.

CLANG!

A rising backhand along the opposite diagonal... The parry caught it by a hair, and the vibration numbed his fingers to the bone.

BANG!

Silas stepped onto the outside of Valerius’s lead foot and pinned his mobility to the floor with a heavy stomp that cracked the tile.

With his left forearm he shoved Valerius’s sword hand upward and trapped the blond’s wrist against his own crossguard, completely shutting down his casting through Zephyr’s Loop.

Valerius breathed in ragged choked gasps.

"Haah... Haah..."

His face was pale from mana exertion, his hair plastered to his forehead and his golden eyes wide with the realization that every avenue of retreat had been closed.

He had the speed... He had the brilliant impossible angles of the Crosswind Weave but in a space this tight, stripped of room to accelerate, Silas’s relentless swordsmanship and fluid water were suffocating him.

’He’s a monster,’ Valerius thought, chest heaving as he strained against the pinned guard. ’He figured out the counter-timing in less than two minutes and he isn’t even breathing hard...’

Up in the stands Morwenna’s lips curled into a sharp vindictive smirk.

’That’s it, Captain,’ she thought, her arms crossing with smug pride. ’Break his rudder, pin his sails, and board the deck. The boy had a clever gust in his sails, but he doesn’t know how to fight in the shallows...’

Aeliana nodded once, her shortened ears perfectly still.

"Lord Sy has him pinned," she remarked formally to the empty air. "It will be over in a moment like Rika predicted."

Solenne let out a long relieved sigh, her fluffy caramel tail beginning to wag in slow happy arcs against her skirt.

"Oh, thank goodness... Lord Silas has him completely trapped!"

Only Mia stayed tense on the metal railing.

Her small hands gripped the painted iron with white-knuckled intensity.

Her green eyes flicked between Valerius’s gasping cornered frame and the cold golden-ringed gaze of her student.

Her pointed ears twitched backward, and her face twisted into a comical frantic scowl of protective panic.

’Wait, wait, wait!’ Mia thought, mind shrieking as she saw the line Silas was preparing. ’He’s really going to flatten my Master! He’s going to bruise his ribs and leave him groaning on the floor for three days! I’m the only one allowed to bully him like that!’

Down on the floor Silas finalized the bind.

With a smooth effortless twist of his right wrist he sheared the broadsword down the length of Valerius’s arming sword and levered the blond’s blade completely out of his line of defense with a loud metallic shing.

BANG!

The blade scraped away with a long metallic scream that echoed off the basalt walls as Valerius’s chest was wide open.

His center of gravity was shattered, his heels trapped against the wet tile and his mana channels jammed by the physical bind so Silas stepped in for the finishing stroke.

"It’s over!"

He drew the broadsword back and aimed a clean flat-bladed horizontal strike at the center of Valerius’s exposed torso in a blow with just enough weight to send him skidding harmlessly across the dampening tiles and end the duel.

...The steel began its descent, whistling through the damp air and inches away from Valerius’s ribs.

SPLASH!

A massive pressurized wall of water detonated against the side of Silas’s face.

BOOOOOM!

The torrent hit him like a runaway river barge, roaring across the arena with a sound like a dam bursting, and knocked him four feet sideways across the wet tiles in a blinding spray of foam and white water.

Silas caught his footing with a sharp splash, coughing and shaking his head as dark hair plastered over his eyes and his black jacket began dripping.

He blinked through the stinging spray and stared up in utter disbelief at the mezzanine railing.

Mia was leaning clear over the iron rail with her hands cupped around her mouth with her long pointed ears twitching with outrage as she screamed at the top of her lungs across the chamber.

"Don’t finish off my Master, don’t you want to see me again?!"