Chapter 57: Sole Custody

Sylph stepped out in front of Veria and raised her wings to appear just that tiny fraction larger. She had little knowledge of the desert’s customs, but she trusted Veria. After clearing her throat, she bellowed: “As the heir to Senbo, I challenge Nahana for the title of Mistress and nominate Veria as champion on my behalf. This audience will be my witness.”

The silence in the crowd intensified as the guards stopped where they stood. All gazes turned towards Nahana. She froze for but a second before she caught her slip in manners and posed as usual, casting a great shadow downwards. If she preferred to follow ancient royalty rules to the book, she had to accept this. No guards or outside forces could interfere.

Nahana sucked in air before she bellowed: “I accept the challenge and nominate myself as champion.”

“She is gonna fight?” Nahana flung herself off the balcony, explosively spread open her wings and came to a feather soft landing about ten tail-lengths away. Before the flying grains of sand even settled, Nahana took a stance. Sylph recognized it as the most basic Aer stance, the one she disliked herself. Fluid and poised like a leaf in the wind, or so the written accounts stated. Nahana filled the description with life unlike any Aer Sylph had witnessed before. The tight tension in her muscles and body should seem more rigid and sturdy, and yet she stood as a feather to be blown away by wind and swipe alike. What Dust said about her, it now made sense, but to see zero hesitation of going claw to claw with Veria still surprised her.

“Let’s make this quick. I want your bad influence away from my heir,” Nahana grumbled, and Sylph felt the tingles of static in her wings. She still called Sylph her heir, so her earlier assumption about the execution may have been correct.

“You recognize my daughter’s stubbornness as my own,” Veria said and turned her head to Sylph, but never lost sight of Nahana. “My decisions might not have been the best decision I made, but I made them with her best interest at heart. And I got Oasis to right any actual bad influence I might have.” Veria grinned at Sylph and she knew the words were aimed at her and she chose the world as witness to what she meant. Sylph smiled back.

“Eurgh,” Nahana scoffed and bared her teeth, “Sylph should know her place. Don’t poison her mind with allusions of freedom and self-realization. Enough with the pleasantries.” Nahana surged into the air and with a few powerful beats of her wings, she rose above them.

“You want to play like that, do you?” Veria jumped up after her. The sudden gust of wind had Sylph flinch, and the thrown up sand and dust forced her to shield her eyes. She had never seen an aerial duel with Veria, who preferred the ground.

To the unknowing observer, it might look as though they stalled for time as they kept circling above, but Sylph saw the constant adjustments they made. Aer had the advantage in the air, as their name suggested, but she knew how her mother fought, so things were about to get dangerous.

Dalian, as the unknowing onlooker, sat down next to Sylph. “This is the longest I have seen a fight take. I am surprised Veria hasn’t taken her down yet.” He was no duelist, but even he should recognize the unusual tension.

“I hate to only watch,” Sylph said. “Hard to tell who has the upper hand.”

“They have not started,” he said with the usual, nonchalant calm in his voice. Either he truly believed in Veria’s prowess like no other, or he really could not see what was happening.

“They have,” Sylph said, assuming it was the latter, “I have never seen a deadlier match-up.” Every beat of their wings, every flick of their tails, they were all calculated down to the very muscle. Merely watching them made Sylph’s scales stand up straight, and she realized that she never saw Veria fight seriously. It only proved Nahana’s inconspicuous prowess.

Veria followed her teachings and struck first. She broke out of the circle and charged straight at Nahana. A mere tail-length away, she rolled to her side and shot past. A silver flash barely missed Nahana’s belly, who missed a deadly grab as Veria stopped earlier than she had predicted and dived.

Nahana followed downwards, but Veria flared open her wings to stop. Transferring all momentum into a flip, the silver blade struck fast enough to nick Nahana’s horns before they split in opposite directions. That attack could have ended it, but Nahana grew cautious and evaded all follow-ups as they spiraled towards the ground. Like two plumes of smoke, they swirled around each other without ever touching before they broke away two tail-lengths above the sand.

Sylph’s tail kept tapping the sand below. A singular mistake of either and the other would die, and Nahana pushed Veria out of her comfort zone. She preferred to get in close and personal, with little regard to a few new scratches. But hitting Nahana the wrong way would shock and kill her. Nahana on the other pfod had no defense but her weapon if Veria closed the distance.

After a few more near misses, they both paused to hover some tail-lengths apart, talking, but too quiet to be heard from down on the sand. Nahana let her body sag a little before she burst straight up. Veria tried to follow, but her shorter wings could not match the power of her massive Aer wings.

At the apex of her climb, Nahana stopped, threw her head back and looked as though she inhaled much like a Sol about to spit fire. No, Sylph realized, and felt her center of water quiver. She did not inhale; she was retching.

Nahana’s mouth opened and a hair-thin beam of water erupted from its depths. Veria barely flung herself out of the way. The beam struck the very edge of her leg and peeled away her thick scales like a grater. A great cloud of blood spluttered along the length of it. Sylph’s heart raced at the sight of the bloody cloud, but it was a mere glancing blow to Veria. Nothing that would hinder her.

The accelerated water did not stop. Thin as a hair, it instantly crossed the distance down to the sand and struck the floor like a thousand pounds forced into a spot the size of a needle head. Sand spewed upward and blocked their view.

This was what Dust recalled. That beam cut through sheer rock like a claw through a cloud. Sylph followed the old cut below the audience and imagined the bloodbath of the past and the more she imagined what that beam could do, the queasier her stomach grew.

“Nahana is a pathwalker,” Dalian realized. He drew in a scant breath and the dust cloud parted as if shoved aside.

“Like you said, I walk the same path.”

Brandon, who had been quiet until now, spoke. “Do you think you will be able to do something similar? That looked like it came from the inside.”

“It can look similar after a night of heavy drinking, but no. She controls water outside. That is why she downed the wine.” The way some drops still clung to her scales in the bath, it suddenly made sense. “She can only manipulate moving water.” Throwing it up was a somewhat crude way to set up her ability, albeit the only other way to move water out of the body Sylph could think of sounded even worse. Ultimately, it proved effective and deadly to her opponent if they did not know.

She turned back to the fight that had been interrupted by more hover talking. This was not a fair duel anymore. Nahana cheated with unnatural abilities. “Dalian, it was illegal to interfere to turn the duel into one contestant’s favor, right?”

Dalian vigorously shook his head. “Legally yes. But, whatever it is you are thinking, no. She could send her entire guard force on us if you interfered.”

“I am not helping either of them. I’m just gonna be a public nuisance.”

Dalian raised his arm and the distant shimmer in his eyes spoke volumes about why she had a terrible idea. But Sylph had already decided on her course of action. She undid the liquid knot around the improved flashing paint and grabbed hold of it. She forced it to spread out evenly on her wings and then dried it. It shimmered more intensely than the earlier version and, if Brandon did a good job, it should produce an even brighter flash of light.

Veria would realize what she planned. “I’m not watching Nahana kill my mother with her ability. Nahana isn’t playing fair, so I won’t either.”

Sylph raised her wings and ignored the ache in her muscles as she turned them to face forward. Her weapon charged up to its peak until it throbbed with energy. Bristling from tail to snout with power, she met Veria’s piercing gaze for but a second. She spun in midair, covered herself in her wings like a cloak, and dove.

Sylph released the hold on her weapon. The world exploded into a blinding white as the mounting pressure in her back throbbed away. Much like on the training field, the audience stumbled and stood up and did nothing you should when blinded. Although this time, even she had two massive silvery spots clouding her vision. Focusing on the blurred fight above, one of them broke off and descended as a great shadow.