Chapter: 656 – Shadows and Void

Tala sealed her helmet entirely as it seemed that her dissolution breath wouldn’t be of use in this fight. Well, it wouldn’t be useful, unless she wanted to win by dint of forcing him to leave the ring, and that wouldn’t be… satisfying.

It also wouldn’t prove what she needed to show for this to be a success.

As such, she lunged forward, Flow elongating into the form of a glaive, her proportions entirely larger than anything Tala had ever needed before. As such, she struck with the blade from nearly twenty feet away.

Eskau Pallaun jerked his arm to the side, and even though it seemed like he was either holding nothing, or simple ephemeral shadows, Flow was deflected effortlessly.

With easy confidence, the Eskau simply strode forward, arms once again hanging lazily at his sides.

His every step resonated with power, the whole area seeming to darken to mundane sight. It even made things a bit harder to follow for Tala, despite all her forms of perception and Alat’s assistance.

His shadows sheathed his arms once again as he continued, unhurriedly.

Feeling the smallest bit of uncertainty, Tala pulled Flow’s form back, thinking to make a knife to try fighting close in.

The next instant he was right before her, somehow covering the distance between them in the same blink of time that it took to reshape Flow.

What followed was seemingly a one-sided beatdown, where Tala couldn’t hope to block the senior Eskau’s attacks. What made no sense was the fact that the man never seemed to hurry in his strikes—or in any of his movements, really.

Instead, he moved, and Tala felt a certainty behind the action. Like the growing of shadows at the setting of the sun, he was coming, and she simply had to deal with that fact.

As such, Tala and Eskau Pallaun clashed in a mainly melee manner for the moment, and in the realm of pure skill, he had her as out classed as a veteran guardsman in full kit sparring against a child wielding a stick.

His every movement was perfect, stable, precise.

She was by no means a novice, but whether blocking or striking, she continually found herself just slightly overextended or off balance.

Thankfully, martial skill was not the only factor in their clash, not by a copper or a gold.

Tala’s armor didn’t seem to be any sort of physical barrier to his strikes as each attack of his protian weapon was effectively that of a shadow, able to cut anywhere that it could reach. That should have been an insurmountable advantage, not factoring in anything else about the man.

Even so, she felt a building smile.

Tala’s armor didn’t actually need to be a physical barrier. It was part of her, and thus even where there were occasional seams to allow quicker and more natural movement, those were closer to creases in skin than chinks in her armor. It was her own body, and thus his shadows couldn’t bypass it to ‘her flesh’ beneath.

He clearly didn’t understand that it was all her.

As such, his every attack clashed against her armor, causing clear confusion in the man, even if it didn’t slow him down.

Tala could simply stand and take every hit he gave, and while he could likely knock her around, nothing he’d shown so far would do more than tink or thunk against her armored exterior.

Nonetheless, his attacks were clearly anything but mundane, and Tala began to sense powerful magics building within them as his steady assault continued. As to his weapon’s form—if it was ever in a true ‘form’ rather than just an indistinguishable shadow—it shifted from one to the next as quickly as thought.

Tala clashed against it with armored body and bladed extensions. Flow intercepted what she could, and her armor flowed to repair the little nicks that appeared across its surface. Even the small bits that were shaved off pulling back to meld with the rest before they could reach the ground.

Still, she wasn’t content to just take the attacks. She did her best to strike back at every opportunity.

One moment, she was balanced on one leg, crouched low and lancing out with Flow in a dozen consecutive strikes, changing the weapon’s form from sword to glaive and back as needed in a seemingly vain attempt to cut at Eskau Pallaun’s legs. The man avoided each, always shifting just enough to avoid taking cut or thrust.

The next moment, she was bracing against an unbelievably powerful, simple strike from her opponent.

As an attempt to throw the other Eskau off, she reached out to lock down the world around her with authority through the medium of her iron chain net. The attempt utterly failed.

As she’d noticed before, the authority within this ancient hold was entirely and irrevocably that of the House of Blood. While she could tap into that authority as a recognized Eskau of the House, she couldn’t wield it against Eskau Pallaun, who held the same—if not a more elevated version of the—position.

She might have been able to undermine the authority and attack him in that manner, but to do so would have permanent consequences for the House of Blood, and would actually undercut her own power in the hold in the long run.

As such, she let it be, focusing on the physical and magical clash, and the steady, inevitable nature of the man’s attacks.

Make no mistake, Eskau Pallaun wasn’t slow. In fact, they were both moving at speeds that a mundane would have struggled to track as more than brief blurs. Instead, his movements were… direct?

That was likely the right word.

His fighting style was simple, utilitarian, uncaring for tricks, flourishes, or feints.

Tala should have been able to outmatch him physically due to her enhancements, but while she was stronger than him, he was strong enough to take advantage of her imperfections. While she was faster than him, he was fast enough to endlessly press the attack.

She needed to change the field, but she didn’t want to pull out other tools, not yet—ideally not ever—as it would be a sort of admission that she needed them. She already realized that manifesting armor while he was without such could be seen as a bit of a cheat, but because it was her, she didn’t care if others saw it that way.

Stolen story; please report.

She would be true to herself, and anyone who thought differently could rust.

She did consider using siege orbs, but decided that they would be unbalanced in the current fight.

Even with her mostly-self-imposed restrictions, she momentarily wished that she could call on Terry to help counter the other Eskau, but that would likewise be a violation of the spirit of the clash.

Then—as her thoughts danced around Terry’s participation—she almost smacked herself, blaming her thoughtlessness on the fact that she’d yet to truly be pushed since her advancement.

The next moment, she flickered away from an incoming strike, appearing behind Eskau Pallaun and stabbing through his low back with a wide-bladed knife.

The form that she punctured puffed away like dark smoke, but when Eskau Pallaun reappeared on the far side of the area, his head was tilted to the side in consideration. “Spatial magic?”

Tala shrugged in her armor before projecting her voice outside it. “In a sense.”

He grinned. “Wonderful. Come again.”