Nightblade (Darkest night)

"You died," Merlin said from the center of the ring. He looked unamused, his lips twisting into a thin line.

He shook his head.

From the beginning of the entire exchange, he hadn’t moved an inch.

"Again."

​Emily lay on her back for a long moment, staring up at the vaulted stone ceiling where small wisps of smoke drifted lazily toward the iron ventilation grates.

"Crap..." she thought silently.

Her ribs throbbed with a dull, aching heat, and her lungs burned for air. Her legs ached, her arms hurt and her vision was swimming.

Eventually, she moved.

​"The seer vision..." she rasped, rolling onto her side and reaching blindly for her glasses.

Her fingers found the frame, and she carefully slipped them back over her ears.

They were still in one piece.

The blurry world around her snapped back into sharp focus.

"The seer vision showed me three different attacks."

"No, it showed you three different intentions," Merlin said dryly, walking slowly toward her.

The man moved with cat-like grace.

Even as he crossed the remaining distance, his boots made no sound against the scorched floor.

"You treat your sight as if it were a window looking into a finished room. It is not. It is a sketch of possibilities. An unfinished painting."

" An experienced combatant—someone who understands how sensory Type Talented and Seers read momentum—will deliberately generate false intent. "

"They will think about striking high while preparing to strike low. They will allow their body to signal a left hook while their ability gathers in their right foot."

​He stopped five paces away, looking down at her.

"Your Seer gift is exceptional, Emily. But right now, it is a crutch that is going to get you killed. I see that now."

​Emily pushed herself up to a sitting position, resting her elbows on her knees. She wiped a smudge of soot from her cheek with the back of her sleeve.

"So what am I supposed to do? Ignore what I see?"

"No," Merlin said.

"You learn to filter it. I don’t want you to react to what might happen. You must use the vision to narrow the field of reality, and then rely on your physical perception—your wind, your lightning, your own skin—to confirm the absolute moment of execution."

​He extended a hand.

"That is how you’ll win."

​Emily looked at his hand for a second, then reached up and took it. Merlin lifted her back onto her feet effortlessly.

"You are trying to play a game of chess where you look ten moves ahead while ignoring the piece currently taking your king," Merlin continued, stepping back and resuming his relaxed stance.

"The students you will face in the Veilrend Games are not children playing with wooden swords."

"They are the elite of the Great Houses, the other academies, and the Talented from around the world."

"Many of them have trained since they could walk. If you give them a fraction of a second of hesitation while you ponder three different futures, they will capitalize on it without mercy. You’ll be done before you’ve made single move. "

​Emily flexed her fingers, feeling the static current humming beneath her skin.

"I know."

​"Do you?" Merlin’s voice softened slightly, though his eyes remained sharp.

"You are distracted today"

​Emily paused, adjusting her tie

. "I’m not distracted."

Your focus is fractured," Merlin said quietly.

"And I know why. Part of your mind is in this room. The rest of it is somewhere in Tenebris wondering if a certain young man is still breathing."

​The silence that followed was heavy, only broken by the soft crackling of dying sparks on the stone walls.

​Emily lowered her hands. She didn’t deny it, she couldn’t deny it.

There was no point in lying to Merlin Hale Crest.

The man read subtle shifts in body language the way ordinary people read books. And as if that wasn’t enough, the man was a telepath.

He’d granted her privacy in her own head but it made little difference to him.

​"Morgan can take care of himself," Emily said, though her voice lacked some of its usual bite.

"He’s... annoying like that. But reality usually bends out of the way before he does."

"From the stories I’ve heard, Morgan Thane is an anomaly," Merlin said, in a matter-of-fact tone.

He paused, staring at her for a long moment.

"But you cannot fight his battles, Emily. And more importantly, you cannot afford to measure your own progression solely against his shadow."

"You are an elemental Talented with a rare gift. If you go into the Veilrend Games looking over your shoulder for him, you will fail before you ever reach the main stage."

​Emily looked down at her hands. The faint blue sparks of lightning danced across her knuckles, casting long, erratic shadows on the cracked stone.

​She knew Merlin was right.

But she didn’t want to be the person who stayed behind in the safety of the academy, waiting to hear whether he had survived.

She didn’t want to be someone who needed to be shielded when the world around her inevitably broke.

​She wanted to stand at the top of the podium at the Veilrend Games.

She wanted her own strength, forged by her own will.

​Emily raised her head.

Her green eyes locked onto Merlin’s silver ones.

​"Again," she said.

Merlin stared at her for a long second.

Then, the corner of his thin mouth twitched upward in the subtlest ghost of a smile.

​"Very well," he said. "No Seer sight this time.

Let’s try something different."

He smirked.

"I am going to blindfold you."

​Before Emily could complain, Merlin raised two fingers.

A strip of dense, black silk materialized from a small runic circle in the air and drifted down into his hand.

He stepped forward and wrapped it firmly over her eyes, tying it tight behind her head.

​Complete darkness swallowed her vision.

​"Hey—" Emily started.

​"You rely too much on your eyes," Merlin’s voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere at once, his location muffled by a subtle auditory displacement ability.

"Feel the displacement of air with your wind. Feel the static charges in the atmosphere with your lightning. When I strike, do not look for what’s going to happen in the future. Instead, focus on the present."