“Hmm?” Nessos peered past the front gate, his gaze cold as moonlight drawing steel. “Fall back, all of you! I’ll handle this old relic!” He coiled like a bow and arrow, then launched at the gate with a hunter’s rush.
“Ah!” Euticles blanched, his voice snapping like a reed in wind. “Scatter—scatter—”
Sprites scattered like leaves in a gale, while Euticles rose into the sky like a hawk. Nessos crashed through their line like a boar, and the Sprites drew bowstrings tight as frost and loosed a rain of arrows.
Nessos threw his head back with a sky-shaking roar—“Roar—” His ring-braced fists blazed white, like twin suns in storm. He raised them high and hammered down. “Boom—” The earth wailed like a wounded beast; towering trees toppled like felled pillars, and a storm of leaves drifted from the dark canopy.
Around him, the shock carved a circular ward, a wind-carved ring in dust. “Clang-clang-clang-clang—” Arrows struck the barrier like a mountain of iron, heads bending and clattering to the ground like broken thorns.
“What?!” Euticles reeled like a man struck by thunder. The human before him had torn free from every old impression, a gulf wide as a ravine; no human from bygone years could summon such a thing.
“Who are you? What’s with your power and that weapon?” Euticles asked, his voice tight as a bowstring.
Nessos pressed his neck and twisted twice, bones crackling like winter branches. “What’s there to say to bumpkins? You frogs in a well, squatting on your mountain like moss. Bet you haven’t talked to the allied nations in ages.”
“You sit blind to every wind and rumor. Do you even know what you are? You’ve woven your own cocoon and tied yourselves in it.”
“Kid, you sure talk,” Euticles said, mouth smiling like a thin crescent, heart clenching like a fist in fog. They really hadn’t dealt with the allied nations for decades, living self-sufficient as a sealed valley; the world outside had likely overturned like a storm-tossed sea.
“Old man, move aside. I’ll spare your people from death. How’s that?” Nessos rolled his shoulders, joints popping like hail on stone.
Euticles didn’t answer; his voice steadied like a drum at dawn. “All Grade D personnel, withdraw and shield the ordinary Sprites! Leave three hundred Grade C with me; the rest intercept those Mountain Bandits. Keep it ranged, don’t crash head-on. I’ll fight him; you support from the flank.”
“Yes, Elder!” The reply rose like a chorus of larks, then fell away like a receding tide.
In moments, dense ranks of Grade D and Grade C Sprites streamed off like starlings flushing from trees.
“Boss—what do we do?” a Mountain Bandit at the outer wall shouted, eyes wide as lanterns as Euticles’s people jammed the gate like a dam.
Nessos said nothing, his silence heavy as a storm cloud. He flashed forward, iron fist slamming into the wall beside the gate. “Boom—whump—” Stone exploded like brittle ice, and a gaping maw opened in the fortification.
“So the barrier and magic gone, and now the wall can’t hold…” Euticles felt his heart twist like rope under strain, a single breath sharp as a thorn.
“Go loose. Do whatever you want.” Nessos’s low voice tolled like a war drum, and the battle began like wildfire licking dry grass.
“Whooo—” “Awooo—” “Sprites—hahaha—” The Mountain Bandits scattered like wolves slipping through brush.
“Damn little whelps! Those who just withdrew, intercept them!” Euticles stared at the figure before him, weighty as Mount Tai, and dared not strike first; caution held him like frost on a blade.
Sprites drew long swords with a hiss like rain on slate, charging the bandits like rivers breaking dams.
“Oh? You think your hillbilly Sprites can stop my men?” Nessos scoffed, watching sword-hands tremble like aspen leaves.
Euticles said nothing; he drew a bamboo-like blade, a reed sword with a hollow tip, sharp as a thorn. Its slender body was a wind channel, its round, empty tail a whispering throat; it looked like a willow switch that breathed storm.
“Heh… hahahaha! Gonna spank me with a bamboo strip? Oh no, I’m terrified.” Nessos’s mockery rang like a cracked bell.
Euticles’s mouth curled, his white beard stirring like cloud without wind. He thrust forward, the motion clean as a heron’s beak. Nessos slipped aside on instinct like a cat skirting rain, but a red line opened on his cheek, thin as a paper cut.
“Seems you’re not all arrogance,” Euticles said, voice low as the moon’s hum. “Dozens of humans died to that single thrust, never knowing how. I wondered if you were the same.” His weathered face, carved like old bark, turned mysterious and grim beneath the cold moon.
Nessos touched the cut, fingers tasting iron like winter tea. He glanced at the bamboo blade and seemed to catch the wind’s secret. He showed the cold-lit spikes on his knuckles, eyes locking on Euticles like a hawk on prey. Ten heartbeats held like drawn bows, then Nessos burst forward like a released storm.
He catapulted from the ground; the takeoff shattered earth into a pit like a hoofprint of a giant. He streaked to Euticles like lightning, left fist whipping at his cheek like a gust. Euticles bent and slipped by like grass parting in wind, his bamboo sword sweeping low toward the legs like a river scythe.
Nessos sprang to avoid, feet light as a deer over brush. Euticles’s blade flung an invisible edge, a wind-slice that cleaved the building behind like a butcher’s knife through bone. The structure snapped at the waist and toppled, crash booming like thunder on a cliff.
Nessos didn’t look back; his right hand surged, an uppercut like a hammer aimed at the jaw. Euticles leaned away, the blade’s edge grazing like frost, shaving off a tuft of beard that fell like snow. Nessos’s left hand raced, then drove a right hook like a swung bell. Euticles, a breath late, dragged the bamboo sword up from the ground like a plow turning soil.
Startled, Nessos tucked and rolled aside like a lizard under stone. “Vrr—zzzt—” The blade ripped a razor of air that skimmed past him by a hair like a mosquito’s leg. “Swish—crack—boom!” Another hut fell, split like a log under an axe.
Euticles moved first now, darting like a swallow. He stabbed for the not-yet-risen Nessos with speed like rain. “Swish-swish-swish—” His hands blurred beyond sense, the bamboo blade flowering into a thousand phantom arms.
“Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh-whoosh—” The blade’s tip spat wind-guns, drilling the ground into bottomless pinholes like raindrops turned bullets. A headshot would have ended him like a candle snuffed by a gust.
Nessos couldn’t rise, forced to roll left and right like a fish in nets, dodging the sword-qi that fell like monsoon rain. Euticles chased the rolling path like a fox on a trail. “Whoosh-whoosh—thud-thud—” Wind-shots jetted from the blade’s edge, pocking the earth with tight round holes like millet sown in clay.
It felt like someone was stabbing a loaf with bamboo skewers, a thousand punctures one after another. Nessos saw the rushing sword-qi, a river he could not outswim; he stopped rolling and punched the ground backward, a sudden strike like thunder.
Bang. The earth roared like a drum in a temple.
His fists carved two wide circular pits, and he rode the rebound, vaulting into the air like a stone flung from a sling. He tucked and crossed both hands into a cannon of knuckles, then dropped it toward Euticles like a falling star.
Euticles saw the meteor fist descending, bright as anger. He lifted the bamboo sword and swung forward, the blade waving out an air-burst that blew him back like a leaf before a gale. Boom. Nessos’s fist struck, cracking the ground into a giant spiderweb like shattered glass.
It felt like someone slammed the center of a mirror, ripples racing like frost. Shards of stone sprayed toward Euticles like a stony rain. He barred the bamboo sword before his face, catching most of the storm like a shield.
When he steadied, some shards had shredded his robe and drawn lines on his cheeks, bruises and blood blooming like plum blossoms. His black robe hung in tatters like torn crow wings, but he seemed unfazed; he snatched the ruined cloth and flung it skyward like a cast-off cloud, revealing a lean torso mapped with scars like old rivers—proof of a hundred battles.
Nessos’s mask cracked at a corner, exposing his jaw’s edge like a chipped blade, a shadow of stubble rough as sand. He folded his hands behind his back and spoke with a desert-dry disdain. “Old thing, you lost this round. You’ve got craft.”
“Your bamboo blade shapes the wind to flow like a stream. Its hollow core lets you compress air and mold it into killing forms. It pierces like a needle and sweeps like a storm.”
“Paired with your fierce swordplay, you’re a walking engine of ruin, a storm tower on legs. Your instinct and experience are honed like winter steel. Yeah—you’ve earned your seat.”
“But even so, I still nicked your robe and your face, didn’t I?”
Euticles held the bamboo sword in his right, smoothing his long beard with his left like a river calming. “I lost? I only tore an old robe and old skin. Unlike someone, whose hands I’ve poked into honeycombs.”
At that line, Nessos flinched, a shiver like a blade brushed by snow. He knew both hands, hidden behind his back, were already slick with blood like red rain.
