Ch.20
The sunset was doing that thing where the sky turned the color of a bruise, purple bleeding into orange at the horizon, and the wall's shadow stretched across the training ground like a sundial marking the end of another session. Ais was walking beside me down the stone stairs, her practice sword in one hand, her golden hair catching the last of the light. She hadn't said anything since we'd finished. She rarely did. We didn't need to.
My ribs ached from the session. She'd caught me with a lateral cut that had taken the breath out of me, and I'd spent the last three exchanges just trying not to end up on the ground. She'd been pushing harder every day since I'd grazed her forearm, and the increased intensity was leaving marks.
We reached the bottom of the stairs and turned onto the side street that cut through the residential district toward Babel. The street was quiet. Too quiet. No foot traffic, no merchants closing up, no children running past on their way home. The shops on either side had their shutters down. A Jagamarukun cart sat abandoned by a fountain, its awning still up, its owner gone.
I knew what this was.
The knowledge hit before the first figure appeared. Freya's evaluation. The canon scene where Allen and the Gullivers ambushed Bell and Ais after training to test whether Bell was ready for the Minotaur fight. I'd been expecting it for days, checking the timeline against the anime's progression, counting the sessions. The timing was right, the location was right, and the empty street was the tell. Freya's people had cleared it. Nobody wanted civilians in the crossfire when Level 5s and 6s started swinging.
The Minotaur fight was coming. This was the test to see if I was ready for it.
"Ais."
"Mm?"
"We're about to have company."
She looked at me. Her gold eyes were calm. She didn't ask how I knew. She drew her practice sword back into guard position. A wooden sword against whatever was coming. But she was Level 6. The sword didn't matter.
They came from everywhere.
Hooded figures in black, materializing from alley mouths and doorways like the street was breathing them out. Six, eight, ten of them. Level 1 grunts in dark robes, faces hidden, moving in coordinated silence. And behind them, walking through the center of the formation, a tall figure with cat ears pressed flat against dark hair and slit-pupil eyes that reflected the dying light. He walked like he'd done this a hundred times.
Allen Fromel. Level 6. Freya Familia's fastest.
He had a spear. A real one.
Flanking him, four identical short figures. Pallum-sized, armored, moving in a diamond formation that covered each other's angles. The Gulliver Brothers. Alfrik, Dvalinn, Berling, Grer. Level 5, all of them, and they fought as a single organism.
Allen's eyes went past me. Locked on Ais.
"Wallenstein," he said. His voice was flat. "Don't die."
He charged.
The speed was obscene. One second he was standing thirty feet away and the next his spear was cutting the air where Ais had been. She'd moved at the same instant, Tempest flaring to life around her, and the space between them became a blur barely trackable even with S-rank Agility.
Two Gullivers peeled off after Ais. The other two turned toward me. The grunts closed in from both sides.
I moved.
Firebolt into the cluster on my left. The bolt detonated in the center of three robed figures and sent them scattering, one catching fire, the other two thrown sideways into a building wall. The third grunt's robe was burning and he was rolling on the cobblestones trying to put it out. The heat of the explosion washed across my face and the smell of scorched fabric filled the street. I was already turning, Knife out, when the first Gulliver came in low.
He was fast. Level 5 fast. His blade came from below my guard in a rising cut that I had no business dodging at Level 1, but S-rank Agility and weeks of training with a Level 6 gave me the frame to see it coming. I twisted sideways. The blade passed close enough to part the fabric of my shirt and the edge drew a line across my ribs that burned cold and then hot.
Blood. Mine. Running down my side.
The second Gulliver was already there. Behind me, in my blind spot, a coordinated strike that would have gutted a normal Level 1. I threw myself forward and the blade caught the back of my shoulder instead of my spine. A graze, but the impact spun me and I stumbled and caught my balance against a shop wall.
Firebolt. Point-blank at the ground between them. The explosion cracked the cobblestones and sent both Gullivers back a step, blinded by the flash. I used the gap. Two more grunts coming from the right. Knife through the first one's guard, a slash across his forearm that made him drop his weapon. The second grunt swung wide and I ducked under it and put my elbow into his solar plexus and he folded.
Ais was fighting Allen and two Gullivers simultaneously. I caught it in fragments between my own exchanges. The blur of Tempest activating, gold-green wind wrapping her practice sword, the wooden blade becoming a weapon with that wind behind it. Her footwork was the thing I trained against every morning but deployed at full speed, the three-step pattern at Level 6 pace, her body moving through positions I recognized but couldn't replicate at this velocity. Allen's spear met her sword and the shockwave cracked a window behind them. She was faster than him. She was driving him back, step by step, the wind-wrapped sword deflecting his spear on angles that shouldn't be possible.
A grunt was flanking her. Coming up on her left while she engaged Allen, short sword drawn, aimed at her exposed side.
I threw the Firebolt from twenty feet. The bolt caught the grunt in the chest and he went down hard. The second Gulliver on Ais's flank turned at the explosion and looked at me. Looked at me again.
Ais pressed the opening. Her sword connected with Allen's spear shaft, wind-enhanced, and the impact drove him back three feet. The two Gullivers on her broke off and regrouped with the two near me.
Four Gullivers. Facing me.
A grunt came in from my blind side. His short sword caught me across the left arm and the pain was bright and specific and I killed him with a Firebolt at contact range before he could pull back. The detonation scorched my own sleeve. The Gullivers were circling, not attacking. Evaluating. They'd been told to test, not to kill, and what they were seeing was a Level 1 who'd just dropped multiple grunts and dodged their coordination.
Allen whistled. Short, sharp. The Gullivers stopped circling.
For a second nothing moved. The street was dust and scorch marks and the smell of burnt fabric and blood. Ais was standing over a collapsed grunt, her splintered practice sword in her hand, golden hair whipping in the remnants of Tempest. Allen stood at the far end of the street with his spear lowered.
The grunts that were still standing pulled back. The ones on the ground were being collected by their companions. The four Gullivers melted backward into the alleys with the synchronized precision of a squad that had done this a thousand times.
Allen looked at me. Then at Ais. His cat ears were still flat and his spear was still in his hand and there was nothing in his face that said this had been an inconvenience.
"Satisfied," he said. To nobody present.
He turned and vanished into the shadows between buildings. The street was empty in seconds. Just Ais and me and the scorch marks and the blood on the cobblestones.
I leaned against the wall. Breathing hard. My ribs burned where the Gulliver had cut me and my left arm was bleeding from the grunt's sword and my shoulder ached where the second Gulliver had grazed me. My shirt was ruined. Three separate cuts in the fabric, all bloody.
"First time someone's tried to kill me on a date," I said.
Ais was standing in the middle of the street. Her practice sword was in pieces, splintered from channeling Tempest through wood. Her golden hair was in disarray, strands stuck to her neck with sweat. She was barely breathing hard. Level 6 meant this had been exercise.
Her head turned. Gold eyes on me. The crease between her brows was deep.
"That wasn't a date."
"Whatever you say, Ais."
She looked at me for a long time. Then she looked at the blood on my side.
"You're injured."
"I noticed."
She walked over. Knelt beside me against the wall. Her hands went to the hem of my shirt and she pulled it up without asking. The cut across my ribs was visible, a shallow slash about four inches long, bleeding freely but not deep enough to be dangerous. The arm cut was longer. The shoulder graze was already clotting.
She pulled a cloth from her belt pouch. Pressed it against the rib cut. Her fingers were on my bare skin, cool from the evening air, and her other hand held my shirt up and she was close enough that her hair brushed my shoulder when she leaned in to look at the wound. The scent of her was clean sweat and wind from the Tempest she'd called, and underneath it her soap, the same one I smelled every morning during training but closer now, warmer.
"Hold this," she said.
I put my hand over hers on the cloth. Her fingers slid out from under mine and went to examine the arm cut. She checked the edges of each wound, pressed where it needed pressing, moved on. But her fingers lingered at the edge of the rib cut a moment longer than necessary, tracing the skin beside it.
"These are from the Gulliver Brothers," she said. Her voice was quiet.
"I know who they are."
Her gold eyes came up to mine. Close. The sunset had faded to twilight and her face was lit by the first streetlamps coming on. Her irises had that fractured-gold quality, dark striations in lighter gold, and this close every one was distinct.
"You fought well." She said it the same way she said everything. Flat. Even. But her ears were red.
"Better than yesterday?"
Her hand pressed harder on the cloth against my ribs. The pressure was controlled and deliberate and exactly more than necessary.
"Stop talking," she said.
A cat ran across the empty street behind her. Orange tabby, fat, completely unbothered by the combat that had happened thirty seconds ago. It jumped onto a windowsill and sat down and started cleaning its paw.
Ais finished the bandaging in silence. Her hands were steady and efficient and warm where they touched my skin. When she was done she stood up and looked down at me and her face was composed and her posture was straight and the only tell was the red on the tips of her ears and her hand staying at her side a moment too long before she pulled it back.
"Tomorrow," she said.
She walked away.
I sat against the wall and watched her go. The orange cat on the windowsill watched too. The collarbone bite mark from Hestia was visible through the torn collar of my ruined shirt, and the rib bandage was tight and warm where Ais's hands had been, and both of them were on me at the same time and neither knew about the other.
The cat yawned.
I got up and went home.