Anathema of The Rain
The clash resumed with both men changed.
Vito now stood encased in black armor, its presence heavy and absolute, while Randia faced him wielding two weapons. One was the scythe—no longer held, no longer bound by hand or grip—hovering at his side, moving in perfect obedience to thought alone. The other was a spear.
The spear was Randia’s true language.
It was the weapon through which his mastery spoke most clearly, the instrument that had carried him through countless battles without defeat. No record existed—no whisper, no half-forgotten tale—of Randia ever losing a duel when fighting spear to spear.
Before might met once more, Vito spoke.
“You were struck by Skyline,” he said, his voice calm as he began to circle Randia, boots crunching softly against broken stone. “A sword forged by Nirlen. A blacksmith—and once, a remarkably gifted swordsman himself.”
Rain slid down the planes of his armor, tracing dark seams as he moved.
“Most people remember him for something else,” Vito went on. “For how catastrophically terrible he was with bow and arrow. So bad that it became legend. They called him the grumpy old dog mocked by the sky.”
Randia did not answer.
Vito exhaled, faintly disappointed.
“Of course you haven’t heard of him. You were always so out of touch with humans and their stories.”
Randia attacked.
The scythe moved first.
Its arc compressed the air itself, collapsing pressure into a single invisible plane before releasing it forward in a silent surge. The slash traveled fast, gaining mass and reach as it crossed the arena—the farther it went, the more violent it became. There was no light, nor anything that the eyes could perceive, as if it's delivering a tranquil death.
Yet the rain betrayed it.
Droplets shattered and scattered along an unseen curve, the falling water momentarily rewritten by force. Vito caught the anomaly in an instant and twisted away, launching into an aerial cartwheel that carried him cleanly out of the attack’s path. The compressed slash struck the far wall instead, detonating stone into powder with a delayed, thunderous roar.
Vito landed lightly, already turning back.
“Long story short,” he continued, unfazed, “one day an eagle preyed on his cat.”
He straightened, helm facing Randia once more.
“And there goes Skyline, perfectly forged and tempered.”
As he spoke, Vito reached beneath the half-cape at his side.
There was no sheath.
No opening.
Space itself seemed to yield, folding just enough to allow his hand to pass through. When he withdrew it, a new sword emerged from nothingness—drawn as if from a hidden pocket carved into the world itself.
He let the blade settle into his grip.
“Now,” Vito asked, tilting his head slightly, “what do you think the story behind this one is?”
The rain continued to fall.
For the first ten minutes, neither yielded.
They met on even ground—force against force, will against will—two beings moving at the edge of what the world could bear without tearing itself apart.
Randia fought with two weapons, yet never felt divided.
The scythe no longer obeyed motion in the conventional sense. It revolved around him as if guided by an unseen intelligence—circling, tilting, reversing its arc mid-flight with impossible precision. At times it hovered at his flank like a silent judge; at others it surged forward in sudden, flashing multiple lethal sweeps, its blade carving through rain and air alike. Each rotation carried intent. Each pause was a threat. When it struck, it did not scream—it pronounced sentence.
At irregular intervals, the scythe released compressed crescents of force, invisible slashwaves that tore through space in widening arcs. They did not explode on impact; they arrived—sometimes delayed and sometimes fast—and inevitable, splitting stone, cleaving pillars, forcing Vito to move not where the strike was—but where it would be.
The spear, however, was where Randia spoke most fluently.
He advanced with it in seamless motion, footwork flowing like a living current. His grip shifted constantly—high to low, wide to narrow—not for flourish, but for control. Thrusts came without warning, clean and absolute, aimed not at flesh alone but at balance, at breath, at the half-second where reaction faltered. Sweeps followed, low and cutting, forcing retreats that immediately collapsed into feints. Overhead strikes fell like falling branches, redirected mid-descent into lateral kills.
There was no excess.
No wasted movement.
Every motion folded into the next, a lineage of technique refined through a lifetime of survival and battle. Watching him fight with the spear was to witness inevitability expressed through form—an art that did not ask permission to exist.
Vito answered in kind.
His sword was a curved blade—a heavy scimitar—its weight deceptive, its edge hungry. When it moved, it did so with brutal economy: short arcs that bit deep, reversals that snapped like whips, cuts that landed with the force of falling iron yet arrived with startling speed. He did not fence. He cleaved and wreaking havoc. His style favored commitment, yet never recklessness—each strike anchored in the ground, each recovery already coiled into the next attack.
He fought close.
Always close.
When Randia extended with the spear, Vito stepped into the threat, blade flashing in tight, lethal curves meant to sever shafts, wrists, intent. His footwork was predatory—short lunges, sudden pivots, weight shifting low and forward—pressuring space rather than retreating from it. Each step sought to collapse Randia’s range, to deny the spear its breath.
And then there was the cape.
It moved with him like a second body.
At first glance it seemed ornamental—half-draped, trailing, heavy—but in motion it became something else entirely. With a snap of the shoulder or a twist of the spine, the cape lashed outward, its inner lining yawning open into warped space. When Randia’s spear or the scythe’s haft brushed that inner surface, they did not bounce or slide—they caught. Space folded inward, swallowing momentum, trapping weapons in a brief but dangerous suspension, as if embedded in invisible tar.
Yet striking the cape’s outer surface was another matter.
The scythe slammed against it once, then again—each impact met with a dull, elastic resistance. Not steel. Not cloth. Something resilient and absolute. The blade skidded off as though striking a wall that flexed just enough to mock the attempt. Spear thrusts glanced aside, redirected without tearing, without purchase.
Vito used the cape not as defense—but also as control.
He snared, released, redirected.
A spear thrust caught for half a heartbeat—just long enough for his blade to come whispering toward Randia’s throat. A scythe hook swallowed at the edge of its arc—only to be kicked free as Vito spun past, sword carving low. The cape snapped, folded, unfurled again, each motion timed with cruel precision.
Rain screamed as it was cut apart.
Stone shattered beneath missed steps.
The arena became a lattice of intersecting trajectories—blade, haft, force, space—each man reading the other in fractions of intent. Neither spoke now. There was no room for it. Their dialogue was written in movement, in pressure, in the narrowing margin between survival and failure.
For ten minutes, the balance held. Not because either lacked the strength to end it, but because both were too skilled to allow the other that opening. The world, battered and trembling beneath them, waited for the moment when even mastery would no longer be enough.
Randia shifted his grip and let the shaft slide loose, allowing its weight to roll across his shoulders. The divine steel brushed the back of his neck as the blade circled him, a silver arc drawn so close that a lesser man would have flinched. With a twist of his spine and a snap of his wrists, the rotation became a cleaving sweep—wide, violent, meant to tear space itself open.
Vito ducked beneath it, steel grazing the edge of his helmet.
The great hero did not pursue. Instead, he drove the spear straight down into the arena floor as if planting a pillar. Stone cracked around the point. Before Vito could read the purpose behind it, Randia was already moving. One foot found the shaft, then the other. He climbed in a single fluid motion, body rising as though the pull of the planet had been briefly dismissed. For a breath, he stood atop the weapon—balanced, still—his silhouette framed against the rain-dark sky.
A pause—just long enough to invite a mistake.
Vito bites the bait as he lunged upward.
That was when Randia let go.
His body fell, not uncontrolled, but guided. As he dropped, his hands slid down the shaft, wrenching it free from the ground and dragging the weapon with him. The staff rolled across his back, the haft biting into his shoulders as he twisted mid-fall, turning descent into rotation.
Momentum gathered. Weight multiplied. The world narrowed to a single line.
He hit the ground in a low crouch, spine snapping forward as the weapon completed its arc—an immense, back-driven swing that came down like a collapsing tower. Air ruptured. Stone screamed. The blow was not aimed to cut, but to crush, to overwhelm guard and footing alike.
Air ruptured. Stone screamed.
The impact shook the arena. Puddles burst upward as if the earth itself had flinched.
Even braced, even prepared, Vito was driven back several steps, arms numbed, stance fractured. In that instant, the truth of the technique became undeniable: not acrobatics, not flourish, but a ruthless surrender to gravity—weaponized, mastered, absolute.
As if having no intention to let his opponent rest, Randia advanced in a blur. His stance shortened. His breath stilled.
Randia did not allow him to recover.
He advanced in a blur. His stance shortened. His breath stilled.
And then the thrusts began.
Not one. Not ten. Not a hundred.
It was as though the rain itself had turned to steel—falling not toward the ground, but toward the horizon. The spear darted forward again and again, relentless and precise, its tip splitting into afterimages. Each strike sought a different line—throat, heart, shoulder, knee—never lingering, never repeating. A sublime spear art of the far east: merciless efficiency, a thousand intentions folded into a single heartbeat.
The scythe joined in like an executioner’s afterthought—sweeping, intercepting, sealing escape. A final cruelty layered atop perfection.
The man in black was driven back. Forced to parry, deflect, redirect, to hide behind his cape. His arms burned. His footwork tightened. Every mistake was punished by a whisper of steel passing too close for comfort.
Until—suddenly—
Double backstab.
Thunder roars, giving the sky no rest. Two blades bloomed from Randia’s chest.
For the second time, steel nested in his heart. Although this time, they came from behind.
Shock flashed across the great hero’s face—but only for a moment. He forced it down, mind snapping back into control as he hurled both his spear and scythe backward, coming like pincers from mirroring sides. The blades screamed through the air, forcing Vito to disengage. Vito sprang away, creating space as he wrenched the swords free from Randia’s heart mid-motion.
“I told you,” Vito said coolly. “You are far too conceited, great hero. Far too blind. Far too shallow.”
He raised his scimitar.
The blade dissolved into light, its form unraveling as though it had never been steel at all. Vito drew that radiance inward and pressed it into one of the seven remaining sigils embedded in his armor. The second sigil ignited at once, flaring scarlet.
“Longing for the Sea,” Vito said, almost fondly. “A natural disaster small enough to rest in one’s palm—and one that grows stronger in the presence of water. A gift, they say, from a water nymph to a fisherman who carved a lake for her.”
Then he lifted his remaining sword—the one he had wielded throughout the Open Duel. Nearly every spectator had seen it before. This was the blade that had ended Haerang’s life.
“This one,” Vito continued, voice softening as his fingers traced the edge, “is my favorite. Echo of Farewell.”
The blade began to pale, its substance thinning into light beneath his touch.
“I took it from an underwater temple far to the south, said to guard us from the coming calamity that will claim the world from the underside. It's so silly to me, knowing that the calamity clearly came from above, and already going for a long time now."
Once more, he pressed the light into his armor.
"It's been an honor, O sword who cuts through time."
Three of the eight sigils now burned.
.
.
.
Randia tried to move.
The intent was there—but his body refused the command. Before he could even settle into a stance, something inside him gave way. Blood burst from his mouth in a violent heave, splattering dark against the rain-slick stone. Agony followed, sudden and absolute, ripping through him with no warning and no mercy. His legs buckled. He fell to one knee, breath ragged, the world tilting—saved from collapse only by the spear he drove into the ground, its haft trembling beneath his grip.
“Don’t force yourself, Hero Randia,” Vito said lightly, almost amused. “After all, you’ve just lost Aine—the Merciful. I imagine that must hurt… quite badly.”
Randia felt it then with great clarity. The divine current that had flowed so naturally through him—endless, responsive—now stuttered. It hasn't gone, nor severed yet for now. Yet, it is unmistakable diminished.
On the other side, the rain did not relent.
It fell without pause, without concern—cold drops striking armor, skin, and stone alike. No omen. No judgment. No mercy. Just the steady, unyielding descent, as if the world itself had chosen to continue, indifferent to the faltering of gods and heroes alike.