Andrew Rowe - On the Shoulders of Titans

I’d never seen Derek look this stymied before — but he didn’t seem angry. From his expression, he looked like he was finally starting to take this sparring match seriously.

That could be bad for us mere bystanders.

Derek took a step backward, lifting the hilts again. Instead of flames, the blades that grew from the hilts were new metal — a shining white material that I didn’t recognize. His aura flared bright yellow and extended over the weapons, visible even without my attunement active.

He was wrapping the swords in his shroud, protecting them from being broken. Not a bad strategy, but I couldn’t do it myself. I’d need to be at least Sunstone-level to do something like that.

Derek rushed forward again, keeping his left arm down in a blocking position while he swung with his right. His sword met Keras’ — and this time it held.

Barely.

The aura around Derek’s sword flickered and cracked as their swords pressed together.

Keras smirked and pushed his blade down.

Derek stepped back, breaking the push, and swung his off-hand at Keras’ mid-section. A golden wave of force followed the cut. Keras cut that in half, but it was a distraction.

Derek stomped his foot.

Spikes ripped free from the rooftop and flew upward. Keras, mid-swing from cutting the last attack apart, barely managed to dance backward to dodge the rock projectiles.

That wasn’t the real attack, either.

When Keras landed, his feet immediately began to sink into the rooftop. A section of stone had liquefied.

Derek snapped his fingers.

Keras’ feet were embedded in stone. He spared a glance downward, looking introspective, and then raised his blade into a defensive stance. “Not bad. Planning ahead, I see. What’s next?”

“Well, since you can’t dodge…” Derek raised his open hand and pointed it at Keras. A sphere of flame manifested in his palm. “Let’s see how much damage you can handle, shall we?”

Derek hurled the sphere. It detonated a few feet in front of Keras, the explosion obscuring the area. I had to raise a hand to shield my eyes from both the brightness and the debris.

Then Derek hurled another fireball — and another, and another. He shoved his blade into the rooftop and hurled them faster, using both hands.

A good thirty seconds passed before I could see Keras clearly again. Smoke was rising from his skin, but he showed no sign of injury. He shook his head. “Has throwing a barrage of weak attacks ever worked for anyone?” Keras sighed. “You’re not taking this seriously.”

The translucent aura around Keras flickered silver for just an instant.

In that instant, the section of floor beneath Keras vanished, removing the stone that had encased his feet. The gap beneath him was a smooth, round section, like an invisible sphere had cut into it.

There was no trace of the missing stone; not even dust.

I stared, evaluating what I was seeing. It was a subtle thing, nothing as flashy as the blasts of flame that Derek had been hurling — but the implications were far more terrifying. He’d annihilated that area without even blinking. I’d never seen anything like it.

Then Keras was gone. His sword remained behind, jammed into the rooftop like Derek’s.

I shifted my head, and there he was again. Behind Derek.

He flicked a finger into Derek’s back.

Crack.

A shockwave of force blasted Derek off his feet, sending him forward several feet. He landed, skidded across the ground, and spun to hurl a jet of flame as a counter-attack.

Keras wasn’t there, though. I couldn’t follow his movement at all — he looked like he was teleporting, but his running stance when he reappeared told me otherwise. He was just moving too fast for me to see.

Derek started to swing a fist — and then he flew backward again. Keras stood with his right hand extended with an open palm. He smirked.

When Derek landed, his aura flared Emerald.

I managed to follow the blur of Keras’ movement the next time, and I saw him reappear.

Derek had caught Keras’ hand. Their fingers were interlocked.

For a moment, the two fighters paused. Sparks crackled in the air as their shrouds met and pushed against each other.

Keras shoved his hand forward. Derek frowned, forced back a step by the motion, and threw a kick with his forward leg. Keras raised his opposite leg to block and threw a punch with his free hand, but Derek moved his head to the side and avoided it.

Derek stomped the floor again. Keras jumped to avoid the spikes that formed — but Derek maintained his grip and yanked Keras back down.

Keras answered by kicking both legs into Derek’s chest as he descended, breaking the link between their hands and hurling the combatants apart.

Keras was moving again the instant he landed, but four walls of stone leapt out of the ground around Derek. Keras punched through the closest wall repeatedly, digging fist-sized holes with each strike. A blast of lightning shot out through the largest hole and hit Keras dead-on, knocking him back.

Keras shivered briefly, his expression showing a flicker of pain.

Interesting, I think that’s the first attack Derek has managed to land that had any real effect.

Keras blurred again, reappearing next to the wall. The aura around his hand flickered brighter.

The wall collapsed into a dozen perfectly-symmetrical pieces.

Derek had electricity dancing along his fingers when he appeared amidst the rubble. He punched Keras in the face with an electrically-charged fist.

Keras recoiled from the blow, but it didn’t slow him much. He raised his own hand, but Derek moved quicker this time, shoving both hands toward Keras’ chest. A blinding column of lightning sent Keras staggering back — and flowed continuously into him without abating.

Keras’ aura brightened, shining silver.

Then a section of lightning was just gone . It was just like what had happened with the stone — as soon as the lightning was getting within range of a spherical aura around Keras, it simply vanished into nothingness.

The floor beneath Keras disintegrated at the same time, and he dropped down an inch before his aura normalized.

Derek pressed the attack, but the moment to recover was all Keras needed. He raised a hand of his own, palm-outward, and shoved it into the oncoming lightning. The voltaic stream split apart, jutting out to Keras’ sides without touching him.

He waved his hand upward and a crescent blade of energy shot through the lightning stream toward Derek, cleaving through the electrical column with ease.

Derek side-stepped the cutting wave, but that forced him to abandon the lightning attack. Keras vanished, reappearing next to Derek and sweeping his hand downward in a cutting motion.

I saw Derek’s Emerald aura tear as Keras’ hand passed through it.

Keras fingers passed within inches of Derek’s neck.

A bloody line appeared on Derek’s skin in the hand’s wake.

I felt a surge of panic, standing up out of instinct, but when Derek raised his own hand and wiped the blood away it was clearly nothing more than a scratch.

That wasn’t because of Derek’s aura protecting him, though, or his own reaction. That perfect of a cut, leaving nothing but a reminder — that was deliberate. It was masterful.

Derek knew it, too. Many fighters would have responded with anger or fear, but Derek’s grin only widened.

That was a far more dangerous response.

“That’s…” Derek looked at the thin layer of blood on his hand. “You’re not even an attuned at all, are you?”

Keras took a step back and cracked his neck. “You’re not wrong.”

The rest of us were dead silent as we watched, still transfixed with the exchange.