Ny'all exploded forward, the earth tore beneath her boots as soil and green debris were ejected from her step. Devoid of the Stillness, she relied on her raw strength and the reflexes honed in the ranks of the Dragon-Oath.
She closed the distance in three strides, bringing her Dragon-Etched steel into an overhead diagonal arc—The Dragon Descends in the Dark—perfectly performed to cleave Yaffa'nor from collarbone to hip. Yaffa'nor stepped back, angling her curved tachi to let the heavier weapon slide harmlessly off her guard, but she fundamentally misjudged the sheer power of the Oath Blade's strength. The bone-rattling impact immediately buckled Yaffa'nor's knees. A flash of uneasy, wide-eyed surprise fractured the Anai champion's veil as a violent tremor shot straight past her wrists and into her shoulders. She looked into Ny'all's eyes and found emotion—anger, not the calm state of focus seen in all Dragon-Oath.
Ny'all pulled her blade from the collision to flow into a vicious horizontal sweep meant to sever the Anai at the knees, an attack to limit the movement of an enemy. Yaffa'nor dropped her guard, catching the blow near the hilt of her tachi, but the impact of the first blow made it impossible to not take the kinetic force of this sweep. Yaffa'nor absorbed the transfer of energy causing her to roll. She was able to recover only to see Ny'all assault continue. With Yaffa'nor fully on the defensive Ny'all capitalized, unleashing a flurry of heavy strikes.
On the other side of the circle, armed with her Red Dunes long dagger, Mia struggled to block the longer tachi without exposing herself to close combat. Her fighting style excelled in the in-between spaces of a blade exchange, relying on timing and calculated risk.
Mia evaded the longer steel, constantly retreating to draw Zalla'nor in. The Anai twin began with a disciplined defense, but Mia's ability to make every strike draw only air caused Zalla'nor to grow fractionally more desperate with each swing.
Zalla'nor's right foot slammed into the dirt with a defiant stomp, transferring the energy into a driving lunge. Mia had cracked the champion's defense without throwing a single strike. Now, that was about to change.
Mia stepped off the centerline to the left of the lunge, deliberately baiting Zalla'nor into a horizontal sweep—the only natural counter to an opponent stepping inside the guard. Mia expected it. Her sparring matches with Ny'all and Darius had sharpened her reflexes far beyond an ordinary fighter.
She ducked beneath the whistling sweep with a fluid grace that visibly shocked Zalla'nor, leaving the champion completely exposed. Mia unleashed Scorpion Beneath the Stone, a precise upward thrust aimed at the inner thigh.
Zalla'nor managed to jerk her hips back, limiting the depth of the cut, but the steel still found flesh. A warm stream of blood soaked into the fabric of her trousers, creeping down toward her feet.
Mia did not follow up. The attack was successful, but it wasn't the incapacitating blow she had planned. She rolled clear to reset her stance.
The elder watched from the edge of the clearing, leaning heavily on her walking stick. "The Oath Blade fights like a brute storm... relentless pressure, never allowing the leaves of the tree to settle," she murmured to herself, her blue eyes tracking the chaos. "And the mother... she stalks you into corners, letting you think she is the prey, only to pounce as a leopard does upon a kudu."
Yaffa'nor and Zalla'nor exchanged a single, panicked glance. They were losing. The women of the Mountain were too ferocious to fight apart. Without a word, a silent command passed between them. They bounded backward in perfect unison, putting several paces of green land between themselves and the Sister-Wives. They shifted their stances, bringing their shoulders together, their tachi blades crossing to form an impenetrable, defensive wall.
Ny'all shifted her right foot and exploded into an aggressive assault. She repositioned in a blur, darting right, then left of the Anai, before launching into a brutal forward lunge. She drove her blade in a heavy stabbing motion, gripping the hilt with her right hand and driving the palm of her left into the base of the pommel to maximize the kinetic force.
The strike was meant to completely break the guard of a swordsman.
But the twins no longer met her force. They fought like clay rather than stone, with Zalla'nor absorbing the impact of Ny'all's blade and Yaffa'nor striking back through narrow openings. Ny'all took a shallow cut to her right shoulder. She growled, her temper flaring as her furious strikes glanced off their perfect defense.
Frustration began to boil over. Ny'all's eyes fluttered shut, her mind subconsciously reaching for the dark comfort of the Void. The air around her immediately began to chill. The skin of Ny'all's damaged shoulder seemed to reach for the edges of the wound, unnaturally attempting to stitch itself back together.
Mia slammed her shoulder into Ny'all's back, physically breaking her stance and snapping her focus. "The promise, Ny'all!" Mia hissed, her eyes wide with warning. "We are not there yet."
To cover Ny'all's lapse, Mia lunged. She feinted low, drawing Yaffa'nor's strike, and whipped her dagger across the Anai's tricep. But before Mia could recover her footing to plant for another attack, Zalla'nor forced her back with a swift kick to the chest. The force caused Mia to roll backward, coming to a rest in the dirt at Ny'all's feet.
Blood bloomed on the pale fabric of Yaffa'nor's sleeve. The wounded twin hissed in pain, and the sisters retreated a single step to reset their wall.
The elder stepped forward, tapping her walking stick against the stones. She looked at the bleeding twins. "Do you yield?"
The Paired Champions lowered their stances and gave a sharp, negative gesture with their curved blades.
The elder turned to the Sister-Wives—Mia in the dirt attempting to stand, and Ny'all's half-healed shoulder leaking fresh blood. "Do you yield?"
Ny'all raised her sword, using the flat, unsharpened blunt of the Dragon-Etched steel to casually swat away the blood pooling near her shoulder wound.
"The Line doesn't yield," Ny'all proclaimed.
Mia rolled her eyes. Ny'all was quoting military dogma in a battle that could shape the direction of history. But the brief pause gave Mia the precious seconds she needed to analyze the enemy.
They only attack when you overextend, Mia thought quickly.
"Use Mountain Guards Its Heart,'" Mia commanded as the thought formed in her mind. "Attack, then immediately fall back into that defensive guard."
"I don't need to retreat," Ny'all snapped.
She surged forward, bringing her sword high above her head to unleash Storm Touches the Gods. In the fighting pits of the Kal-Kal'nor, the downward velocity of this form had shattered an Anai blade. Yaffa'nor and Zalla'nor crossed their tachi, catching the crushing blow together. The twins' feet dug deeply into the dirt, barely holding back the Oath Blade's furious strength.
The locked blades left Ny'all's center exposed. In perfect, ruthless unison, the twins snapped their boots up, delivering a mirrored, brutal kick to Ny'all's midsection that sent her gasping and stumbling backward into the dirt.
Seeing that Ny'all's arrogant attack had been violently repelled, Mia lunged forward to cover her Sister-Wife. Yaffa'nor's tachi immediately snapped out. The long, curved steel easily outranged Mia's Red Dunes dagger, the razor edge nicking Mia's arm as she desperately stepped into the open gap of Ny'all's defense to shield her fallen Sister-Wife from any further advance.
"Mia!" Darius roared.
Ignorant of the sacred laws, he spurred his horse forward, drawing his own Dragon-Etched obsidian sword while staring down the parted path to his wives.
Dozens of veiled Anai warriors blurred from the tree line. In mere seconds, Anai steel was pressed directly against Darius's throat. His ten Dragon-Oath drew their weapons, but they were instantly surrounded, held hostage at the mercy of a hundred Anai blades.
The elder stepped forward, her voice carrying over the rushing waterfall with authority. The Sister-Wives and the Anai Champions paused their duel, breathing heavily as they paid heed to the old woman.
"They invoked the Autonomy Clause, Prince of the Mountain," she warned. "Step into this circle, and you break the sacred law. We will slaughter your vanguard and you, Prince, which will force Ne-HE-miah and your father into open war. Would you risk that slaughter, and this dear alliance that your wives battle for now?"
From the edge of the crowd, Darius watched his wives bleed. The sacred laws and the Anai blades anchored him to the earth, but he refused to stand by while Mia and Ny'all's blood was spilled by the hands of another.
Slowly, Darius raised his hands in a gesture of surrender, one hand still gripping the drawn sword. But as he did, he hurled the blade end-over-end over the heads of his captors, straight into the dirt ring. The black steel embedded itself deep in the mossy soil, just inside the dueling ring.
The sudden movement cost him. An Anai guard kicked Darius squarely in the back, knocking him to ground. The Prince stumbled forward as razor-sharp steel started to slowly sink into the flesh of his neck and shoulders.
"Hold!" The elderly woman's voice cracked the air with a force that seemed impossible from her frail frame. "I, Zekena'nor, spare the Mountain Prince. He breaks no law by discarding his weapon in the circle. Leave him with breath."
The Anai blades that had pierced Darius's skin receded just enough to pull free from his flesh, but they remained hovering inches from his fallen body, promising instant death if he moved again.
Synced
Ny'all knelt in the trampled grass, her left hand clutching her chest where the Anai had landed the thunderous kick. "Are you okay?" Mia asked, as the blood from Yaffa'nor's strike flowed down her arm.
Ny'all stood in defiance of the pain. "I am fine, just go get the sword."
Mia sprinted for the weapon, the soft earth kicking up behind her boots.
Yaffa'nor and Zalla'nor broke their impenetrable defensive wall to intercept the pregnant princess. Ny'all threw herself into the breach between the Anai and Mia, forcing a wedge between them. She abandoned all traditional forms, using her body and her sword as a living shield. A tachi sliced a glancing cut across her ribs; another bit into her thigh. Ny'all roared through the pain, absorbing the twins' fury just long enough for Mia to reach the edge of the circle.
Mia fell to her knees in the dirt, wrapping both hands around the Dragon-Etched hilt of the royal obsidian blade. The metal was cold and dense. She hauled it free with a sharp grunt of effort.
Dragging the tip of the large sword through the moss, Mia rushed back to her bleeding sister's side. Ny'all was panting heavily, fresh blood soaking the side of her leather armor.
"Guard the heart!" Mia commanded, her voice cutting through the roar of the waterfall.
The Sister-Wives moved. They lacked the perfect symmetry of the Anai, but their practiced coordination in the Red Canyons was enough. Ny'all lunged forward, roaring as she threw her entire body weight into an overhead feint.
Yaffa'nor took the bait. She shifted her weight forward to catch the blow and deliver a lethal counter-strike.
Instead of following through, Ny'all fought every aggressive instinct. She violently ripped her momentum backward, planting her boots and retreating into a tight, defensive guard.
Yaffa'nor's counter-strike cleaved through empty air. The Anai champion stumbled forward, her balance broken, overextending her reach for a fraction of a second.
Zalla'nor instantly stepped up to cover her sister's exposed flank, but Mia was already there. Mia swung the obsidian sword forward.
The black steel slammed into Zalla'nor's tachi, jamming the elegant curve of the weapon against Yaffa'nor's guard. The density of the Prince's sword shattered their perfect rhythm and knocked Yaffa'nor to the mossy earth.
Ny'all surged right back into the opening. She brought her sword around in a devastating, horizontal arc, striking the flat of Zalla'nor's extended blade. The impact rang out like a cracked bell. The Anai steel snapped cleanly in half, violently wrenching the broken weapon from the champion's hands.
Running purely on the adrenaline of the fight, Ny'all spun, reversing her grip on her hilt. She twisted the heavy steel for a lethal, decapitating strike against the disarmed twin.
"Ny'all, stop!" Mia commanded, her voice cracking with panic. She dropped the heavy obsidian sword and lunged, grabbing Ny'all's wrists with both hands. "This was not to the death!"
Ny'all froze mid-strike. The razor-sharp edge of her dragon-etched blade trembled in her grip, locked in its incomplete arc. Ny'all's chest heaved, her eyes burning with the feral heat of the fight. Slowly, the bloodlust faded into cold, military discipline. She glared at the defenseless champion.
"Do you yield?" Ny'all snarled, her voice echoing off the cliff walls.
Zalla'nor's shoulders slumped. The Anai champion slowly sank to her knees beside her fallen sister.
Yaffa'nor and Zalla'nor looked at the shattered steel in the dirt, and then up at the bleeding Sister-Wives standing above them.
Slowly, without breaking eye contact with Mia and Ny'all, the Paired Champions reached up and pulled down their veils. Beneath the cloth, their faces were identically marked by exhaustion and awe.
"We yield."