Chapter 90: The List (10)
The sound of their charge met in a thunderclap of wood and flesh.
Phillip’s broadsword came down like a hammer, Lucien’s own blade rising to meet it with a screeching crack that echoed through the arena.
Sparks of pain jolted down Lucien’s arm as the impact rattled his bones, his grip nearly slipping, but he clenched his teeth and shoved back.
Their locked blades shuddered, wood grinding against wood, until Phillip wrenched his weapon sideways with a grunt, trying to throw Lucien’s balance off.
Lucien staggered a step, his ruined arm dragged at him like an anchor, pulling his center of gravity just slightly off.
Phillip pressed in, smelling weakness, his next swing cleaving through the air with brutal intent.
But the moment it reached the arc where power should have sung, Phillip’s ribcage screamed in rebellion.
A flash of agony seized him, his face twisting, his sword faltering at the crucial moment.
Instead of a clean strike, it cut only air as Lucien ducked under.
The crowd erupted.
Half shouted Phillip’s name, urging him to hold strong.
The other half thundered Lucien’s, voices hoarse from chanting his every defiance.
The sound rolled through the gymnasium like a storm, drowning out all else.
Lucien swung back with a desperate horizontal slash, but his off-balance body betrayed him, the cut lacked force, leaving only a shallow crack against Phillip’s guard.
Phillip shoved it aside and retaliated with a downward blow, his knees buckling slightly at the torque.
Lucien braced, sword raised high, their weapons colliding again in an explosion of sweat and strain.
Back and forth they went, two broken machines still forcing themselves to run on fumes.
Phillip’s swings carried the weight of his strength but no longer the fluidity of his form; every motion was jagged, truncated by sharp jolts of pain from his ribs.
Lucien, meanwhile, moved with teeth-gritting defiance, his every parry just a fraction away from collapse.
The imbalance in his stance was obvious, his injured arm dragged him too far to the left, forcing his right to overcompensate with every step, every cut.
Both fought not with precision, but with raw stubbornness, refusing to yield even as their bodies begged them to stop.
The crowd matched them blow for blow.
Every strike landed earned a roar, every miss a chorus of gasps.
Cheers for Lucien clashed with shouts for Phillip until the very walls of the arena trembled.
Even the girl who had once prayed silently now stood at the railing, screaming Phillip’s name until her voice cracked.
The trio of Vaelira, Balt and Corin cheering Lucien in the crescendo of voices.
The judge, long forgotten, raised a hand half-heartedly as if to interven, but then let it drop with a sigh.
His lips curled in a wry line as he muttered to himself, “They wouldn’t hear me over this even if I declared the match ten times over.”
And still the duel raged.
Lucien’s chest rose and fell like a bellows, his mouth dry, throat seared raw from sucking in air.
His eyes narrowed, scanning Phillip’s movements.
‘He’s slowing… his ribs are killing him… he can’t get the wind-up he needs.’
Every strike Phillip threw carried less sharpness, more hesitation.
His swings cut wide arcs that lacked conviction, each aborted early by pain.
Lucien’s mind, strained but calculating, spotted the rhythm faltering.
Then he saw it.
An opening.
Phillip’s guard sagged just a moment too long, his blade dipping lower as his stance faltered.
Lucien’s instincts roared.
‘Now! End this now!’
His body coiled, every last thread of strength funneling into the upward slash he prepared to unleash.
But Phillip moved too.
With a sudden burst of desperation, Phillip’s weapon snapped upward to meet him.
Their eyes locked, each realizing the other had committed.
Lucien’s sword cut forward-
-and froze.
His vision blurred.
The arena, Phillip, the sword, all of it twisted, warped.
He blinked, sweat burning in his eyes, but when his gaze cleared, the sight before him stopped his breath cold.
Phillip wasn’t holding one sword.
He was holding two.
One broadsword arced up in a clean, brutal uppercut.
Another carved downward, a vicious chop aimed at his shoulder.
Two blades, twin phantoms, each promising ruin.
‘What?!’
Lucien’s mind recoiled.
His thoughts shrieked in disarray.
‘No… no, he can’t… he’s not… is this’
The impossible image seared into his sight.
He tried to blink it away, tried to wrench clarity back into his brain, but it remained.
Two weapons, both cutting for him, one from above, one from below.
‘Which is real?! Which one?!’
His pulse hammered, pounding against his skull as panic surged through him.
Dodging was impossible, there was no space left between them, no time.
He had committed to his strike, his body already in motion, locked into the clash.
His only chance was to intercept.
But which strike did he intercept?
The upward slash, climbing towards his ribs like a blade rising to gut him?
The downward chop, plummeting to crush his wounded shoulder and end the fight in one decisive blow?
‘Think! THINK!’
His mind screamed, scrambling for reason, for explanation.
Was this exhaustion twisting his vision?
The pain?
Adrenaline warping time itself?
Or, worse, had Phillip’s swing broken into something he could no longer read?
His grip trembled.
The world narrowed to those two phantom blades.
‘If I choose wrong…’
The thought didn’t finish.
It couldn’t.
Because there was no time left.
And as the impossible sight bore down upon him, Lucien’s mind drowned in panic, caught between two killing strikes, no certainty, no way out.
***
The world narrowed to a single breath.
Lucien’s vision still split, still betrayed him with the impossible image of two blades bearing down.
One climbing, one descending, both promising an end.
For a moment, his mind clawed itself apart trying to decipher which was real.
The panic swelled like a flood; until suddenly, it broke.
‘Damn it.’
The words ripped through his thoughts, cutting cleaner than any blade.
‘Whatever the hell this two-sword bullshit is… I don’t care. He can swing ghosts or illusions or whatever trick his body pulls, what’s real is my opening. That gap in his guard? That’s real. And I’ll end this before he even knows what happened.’
A savage grin twisted at the edge of his lips, more a grimace than anything joyous.
His saber, splintered at the edges, felt heavy in his grip, but he clenched harder, his knuckles whitening as he shoved all doubt aside.
Both hands wrapped around the hilt, and fire exploded through his shoulder.
White-hot, jagged, merciless pain coursed through the torn muscles, but Lucien didn’t shy from it.
He welcomed it.
He dragged the pain into himself, grounding it deep in the pit of his chest.
Every nerve screamed, every tendon protested, but he used it as fuel, the agony sharpening him to a razor’s edge.
And then, in his mind’s eye, Phillip’s sweating, desperate face was gone.
In its place bloomed another image, sharper, more venomous, burned into his memory like a scar.
Leonardo.
The man who had smiled at his suffering.
The aristocrat who embodied everything Lucien despised in this warped world.
The figure who represented entitlement, cruelty, and chains.
‘You. It’s you I’m cutting down.’
The heat in his chest surged into his arms and legs.
His posture shifted, no longer braced to defend.
He twisted his body into a coiled stance, legs tense as bowstrings, spine curving, his saber raised overhead in a brutal, merciless wind-up.
Every ounce of resentment, every drop of bitterness, every shadow of rage that had followed him since the day he first woke in this cursed world flooded into his grip.
It wasn’t just Phillip standing before him anymore, it was every sneer, every insult, every resentment he had swallowed down.
‘Die with me!’
Lucien roared inwardly, his teeth grinding until blood traced his gums.
He came down with a strike that was less a technique and more a judgment.
His saber carved the air in a furious arc, aiming not for points or form, but to shatter, to break, to obliterate the enemy before him.
Phillip’s broadsword screamed upward, muscle and desperation propelling it, but in the race of speed, weight became his enemy.
The saber was faster.
Wood met the guarded helmet with a crack that thundered across the arena.
The impact rang out sharp, metallic, snapping like a gunshot.
Lucien’s saber splintered, the blade shattering from the force, jagged fragments scattering through the air like shrapnel.
But it had done its job.
Phillip’s helmet caved under the strike, spiderweb fractures racing across the reinforced surface until the bamboo split with a shriek.
The young boy’s eyes went wide for an instant, then blank.
His body went slack as if someone had cut his strings.
At the same time, his broadsword, already committed to its path, finished its descent.
It clipped Lucien’s side with punishing force, skidding past his ribs and crashing into the ground beside him.
The impact jarred his torso, drove the air from his lungs, but he barely registered it.
Phillip collapsed forward, his weight folding like a felled tree.
Lucien’s body reacted before his mind did, he caught him, or perhaps Phillip simply fell into him.
The boy slumped against Lucien’s chest, his head dropping against his shoulder.
The scene froze there.
Two duelists, both battered, both broken, locked together in a posture that looked less like combat and more like an embrace.
Lucien stood swaying, too drained to push him away, his splintered saber still clutched in one trembling hand.
Sweat ran down his temple, dripping onto Phillip’s motionless form.
His eyes were glassy, his breath ragged.
He didn’t move.
Couldn’t.
His mind had drifted somewhere else, still lingering in that phantom battlefield where Phillip had been Leonardo.
The illusion hadn’t faded yet, he half-expected the man in his arms to sneer awake with that aristocratic smirk, to mock him even in defeat.
But no.
Phillip was gone, unconscious, head lolling against him.
The arena erupted.
The crowd exploded in a frenzy of sound, cheers, screams, applause crashing together into a single wall of noise that shook the rafters.
The roar carried triumph, disbelief, celebration.
Names were shouted, some for Lucien, some for Phillip, but all with the same feral, exhilarated energy.
The duel had become a storm, and the audience was its thunder.
Lucien barely heard it.
His legs trembled beneath him, but he didn’t fall.
He just stood there, half-conscious, saber splintered, his opponent leaning against him like a brother in arms.
It looked almost tender, almost peaceful, the image of two fighters embracing after battle.
But it was not peace that held Lucien still.
It was the last dregs of rage, still burning faintly in his veins, still whispering with Leonardo’s face.
His grip on reality hung by a thread.
He was too far gone to even realize the duel was over.
