Inside the ring of soldiers, Vaozey and I stood a few meters apart from each other. We were both barechested, except for a strip of fabric across Vaozey’s chest, but we kept our chain pants on like most of the soldiers had. Vaozey’s torso was a patchwork of scars, much like what I had seen of her arms, but looked far better than it had the last time I had seen it. The burns were all but gone above her belly button, replaced with square and rectangular sections of skin that were outlined by the cuts that had been made when she regenerated them. Whatever else was left of her previous burns was mostly hidden by her pants, with only a thin ring being visible.

“Whenever you two are ready,” Shahpao said, backing up to a safe distance.

“So let’s put down a few rules,” Vaozey said. “Keep the hits above the belt so we don’t have to repair our armor, try not to kick too much, and nothing lethal of course.”

“No strong hits to the skull, and no piercing blows to the heart,” I agreed. “Do you want to remove the mail on our legs just in case?”

“Nah, we can avoid hitting them directly,” Vaozey replied. “It’s more fun this way. You ready?”

“All other magic is allowed?” I asked, just to be sure.

“So long as it won’t kill me, sure,” she replied. “Oh, one more thing: If you’re going to cut anything off, try to make it clean. Makes reattaching them easier.”

“I don’t think you’ll need to worry,” I replied, and Vaozey smiled, putting her fists up and bouncing a few times on her feet. It looked a lot like she was taking up a boxing stance, except she was holding her hands a bit too wide to defend her core. I raised my hands as well, keeping them open so I could grab or strike more freely. Force magic stuck me to the ground, but I also mentally coiled up some magic in my feet so I could jump away at a moment’s notice. For a moment, neither of us made a hostile move, and then Vaozey bolted forward.

The difference in her proficiency at unarmed fighting was immediately apparent as she threw two rapid jabs with her left fist to not only test the range between us but gauge how I could react to being struck at. I knew how long her arms were, however, so I didn’t flinch at the first two punches because I could tell they would come up short. Vaozey smiled in response, stepped forward, and then twisted her hips with incredible speed as she threw a punch intended to connect with her right fist. Even at the speed it was moving, I could still track her arm, and I maneuvered my right hand to intercept and deflect the blow. That was where the first unexpected thing happened.

When a human throws a punch, typically their entire body is aligned to produce the strongest force possible in the direction that the punch is traveling. Due to how human musculature works, they have little capacity to resist perpendicular forces on their limb when striking in such a way, allowing fighters to deflect attacks with a minimum of force by intercepting them and batting them away. Most Earth-based unarmed fighting styles take advantage of this weakness in their defensive portions since it is ubiquitous. However, Earth didn’t have magic, and magic doesn’t necessarily require musculature to generate force.

When I began to push Vaozey’s arm away, I noticed a problem: It wasn’t moving. Instead of shifting aside like a normal punch would, it felt as though she was pushing against me to prevent me from deflecting her attack. By the time this information reached my brain, I had only scant milliseconds to react, and thankfully my own magic allowed me to duck out of the way and avoid being punched in the face just in time. As Vaozey’s fist stopped, I felt a rush of air pass by my head, and then the flesh along where my right arm was touching hers burst into searing pain for a moment before she withdrew it and hopped back.

“Interesting,” I said, feeling healing magic fixing the burn she had inflicted.

“I figured you wouldn’t want your face melted like mine used to be,” she replied.

“That wasn’t what I meant,” I replied, jumping forward and returning my own series of blows with some light magical enhancement. Though her form was well above what I was expecting from anyone from Uwriy, she wasn’t any match for me in the technical department, and quickly started to be overwhelmed. Basic feints allowed me to slip my fists past her guard multiple times, striking her in the lower ribs and along the jawline more than once. Interestingly though, every impact felt like it was hitting skin with bone beneath it, and she didn’t move nearly as much as expected when struck. She also burned me every time I made contact with her.

After my twentieth punch or so, Vaozey finally formed a counter-attack plan and implemented it. Lowering her guard on the left side of her face, she baited me into attacking her head, then ducked my punch quickly. Before I could pull my arm back, she was already moving forward, and her fist drove into the center of my stomach, snapping right through my attempts to grab it with magic. What hit me felt more like a piece of metal than flesh, and my connection to the ground also broke as I was lifted from my feet and thrown backwards a full meter. I didn’t have time to register the pain before she was dashing at me with a follow-up and was forced to kick off the ground to my right to make distance.

The crowd of soldiers, who had already been cheering, roared at the new development as the pain from the impact blossomed out of the contact point. I choked back blood and swallowed it, willing my body to fix the damage that had been done as Vaozey regrouped, taking her defensive position again and watching to see what I did next. That could have been lethal if it hit my upper chest, I thought, I wasn’t planning to hit her as hard as she just hit me, but I suppose she needed to use that amount of power to break through my defenses. My eyes scanned her as I went over her actions as I attacked, and I noticed a few different potential weak points.

“Your move,” Vaozey snorted. “Still waiting for the light magic.”

“I’ll use it when I need to,” I replied.

“Stop babying me,” she retorted. “I know you felt that hit. I’m not the kid you fought twelve years ago, you won’t break me by accident.” Her hand and wrist weren’t broken, I realized. The attack Vaozey had hit me with was more than forceful enough to shatter human bone, even if it was cushioned by my abdomen, but she hadn’t suffered any ill effects from it.

“Your defensive technique is dangerous,” I said, circling around her to get nearer to the center of the ring. “How do you manage to avoid hurting yourself with it?”

“You’re the only person to ever ask me that, did you know?” Vaozey snickered. “Beat me and I’ll tell you.” No, not yet, I thought, this is too interesting to end quickly. Tightening up my stance, I stepped back in and began to trade blows again. Using a bit of conscious control over my cores, I saturated my blood enough that I could feel the magic fuel tingling across my body, giving me greater access to immediate energy for striking and dodging. Blocking, not so much, since Vaozey had made it clear that blocking was too costly to be useful against her.

While we were swinging at each other I realized why her guard was so wide, and why her stance was strange for an unarmed fighter. She’s used to fighting people who are swinging weapons at her, I thought, Spears aren’t much of a threat to her because only weak conscripts use them, and I’d bet the Rehvites are too proud to allow themselves to use a weapon like that. Instead, they mostly use weapons that are swung in arcs at their targets for most attacks. It also made sense why Vaozey was mostly trying to go for decisive blows instead of wearing me down, the people she fought probably weren’t the type that were easily exhausted. And she doesn’t know that I’ll run out of magic fuel before she does, I grunted.

As I landed three punches, two to her face and one to her chest, Vaozey leaned back and raised her arm high, then unfolded her hand and chopped at me as she tilted forward again. The move had been slow to wind up so I saw it coming, but I was still surprised at the speed, and she managed to clip the front of my collarbone and ribs with her fingers. Even though the contact was slight, the speed gave it enough energy to cut through my skin with her fingernails, leaving a diagonal line of blood once the wound vanished. Since she was off-balance I struck back with another three punches to her head, going for both ears and her nose before stepping back to avoid a leg sweep.

“Come on,” she grunted, snorting out blood. “You haven’t even used any of your tricks yet. Are you trying to wear me out?” I probably can’t, I thought, almost amused by the suggestion.

“I’m just getting a feel for how you fight,” I replied. “It’s similar to another style I know of.”

“The one you’re using?” Vaozey asked.

“Yeah,” I replied. “Boxing.” I moved in again, and we got back to fighting. As I landed more and more hits on Vaozey’s abdomen, I gradually increased the power of each strike, trying to get a feel for what the cap of her defensive ability was. There didn’t seem to be one, as even after I doubled and then tripled my punching strength with magic I still felt like I was hitting something completely solid. Her body moved more from each impact, but there wasn’t any more give to her flesh. So it’s the same thing she does when she’s striking, just in a different area, I thought as I ducked a hook and returned an uppercut to her chin. Unlike Vaozey, my fists still mostly had the limitations of bone, so they tended to shatter on impact when hitting sufficiently convex surfaces.

Finally, Vaozey made contact again with one of her punches, catching me in the side of the forehead as I ducked away. Just like when she hit me in the stomach, it felt like I was being struck with a piece of metal, and my vision exploded into stars for a moment as I recoiled back, blinking to try to keep my eyes on target. Through the small tunnel in the center of my visual field that was still comprehensible, I saw Vaozey charging at me, and my many decades of fighting experience allowed me to act without thinking. Crouching down, I intercepted her mid-stride with two hands, then used the force of her own run to toss her through the air over my head.

As Vaozey sailed into the crowd of soldiers, the pain from the burns she had inflicted on my hands finally reached my brain, and my vision flooded back at the same time as the cheering from our audience increased in volume. While Vaozey was untangling herself from the limbs of the people I had thrown her into, I spat out a bit of blood that had filled my mouth and took a few breaths, checking how much magic fuel I had left. Without my heads-up display it wasn’t possible to get an exact amount, but my instincts were telling me to finally wrap it up before I started to get really tired.

“Okay, let’s be serious now,” I said.

“You aazsherv,” Vaozey snorted. “Finally.”

“I haven’t shown anyone this trick yet,” I said. “Also, I’ve figured out a weakness in your defenses, but I don’t think most people could capitalize on it.” Vaozey raised an eyebrow inquisitively as I began preparing to shoot two lasers by gathering magic fuel near my eyes. I don’t think I can make them strong enough to kill her, so I’ll just focus on making two bursts with as much energy as possible, I thought.

“You aren’t just going to blind everyone and clobber me?” she joked. “I know it’s harder to defend when I can’t see.”

“That’s not exactly it,” I replied, feeling my lips curl upward. “Are you ready?” There was a flicker of nervousness in Vaozey’s eyes, but then she grinned.

“Show me,” she said, putting her hands up. Sadly, that’s not going to do much, I grunted, and I began approaching her with an intent to strike. As she prepared to defend I fired the two laser beams from the sides of my eyes, both powerful enough to leave a faint streak of green through the air, directly into her pupils. A moment later they constricted into pinpoints, and a rain of punches soon followed. Without her ability to see Vaozey was unable to mount any sort of workable defense, so she instead drew her right arm across her torso and prepared an attack. I had predicted her response, however, and began forming a complex magic construct around my right arm.

Vaozey’s defensive technique was potent but relied heavily on her ability to exert force against a physical object that was striking her, as well as keep her flesh from moving. I hadn’t quite worked out fully how she did it with such accuracy, but I knew enough to know that it would be effective against basically any material attack that she was capable of detecting. Unfortunately for her, I was capable of a number of immaterial attacks, and one in particular that could also be a defense. As Vaozey flung a wide horizontal chop across the air in front of her she probably expected me to move, but instead, I put my right arm in the path of her attack and shoved a huge amount of energy into the force magic blade I had made around it.

In a flash, Vaozey’s entire right forearm detached, spraying me with blood as it flew past me and into the crowd. The sudden loss of mass on her arm made Vaozey lose her balance, and I swept her legs out from under her, throwing her to the ground. The crowd went silent as I put my foot over her neck, then gently pressed down on it and let up. Blood oozed out of her new stump, which wasn’t healing for some reason, and Vaozey coughed out a groan, her eyes struggling to track onto me.

“Gods, fine, you win,” she grumbled, and I removed my foot. “Did anybody see where my arm went?” The crowd, still speechless at the sudden turn of events, didn’t respond. When I looked up, I saw faces with expressions of fear, and the few soldiers I made eye contact with visibly inhaled with nervousness when I did so. “Are you idiots deaf?” Vaozey yelled. “I can’t see anything right now, somebody get it for me. That’s an order.” As she sat up, her arm still didn’t start healing, and one of the male soldiers rushed over with the requested body part, stopping a few paces away from me.

“Uh, I got it,” he said.

“Give it to Yuwniht,” Vaozey said, and he tossed me the limb before rushing back to what he probably thought was a safe distance. “Can you put it over the stump?” Vaozey asked me.

“Yes, but, you’re not healing,” I replied, putting the arm in place and pressing it into the wound. “Are you out of magic fuel?” Vaozey inhaled, then closed her blinded eyes to concentrate, and I saw the skin between the two pieces seal up. She must have been keeping the healing from engaging, I realized, I wonder how she managed that. A moment later, her fingers twitched, and then her right hand balled into a fist. Seeing the sucker punch coming, I leaned back and let it sail past my chin.

“You can’t even let me have that, can you?” Vaozey scoffed. Though her words might have sounded bitter if spoken in another tone, the one she used made it clear she was more amused than upset. “How long is it going to take for my eyes to work again? I can see a bit now, but everything is still pretty dark.”

“Are you concentrating your healing magic on them?” I asked. “I’ve never tried that technique on a person before, so I’m not sure how long it’ll take.” Looking at her eyes, I saw that her pupils were still pinpointed. “I think you’re healed already, but your pupils are just taking a while to go back to normal,” I informed her.

“Mean trick,” Vaozey grunted, getting to her feet. I stood back as she looked around at the silent crowd, then suddenly began to laugh loudly. “You niyzaoz all look like you’ve just watched a murder!” she jeered. “Come on, I asked for it, I got it. You knew he was a scary npoyt when you heard who he was, so stop looking so shocked.” At her words, the crowd seemed to relax a bit, but I still saw nervous glances in my direction.

“It looks like we have a winner,” Shahpao finally announced. “Well, Yuwniht, that was impressive. Do you have anything to share with us?” There was a murmur of agreement through the soldiers, and Vaozey’s right hand clapped onto my left shoulder.

“It was all in good fun, right?” she asked loudly.

“Of course,” I replied with equal volume. “I don’t think I’ll go for a rematch though, tricks like that don’t work as well a second time.” It was a lie, but I could read the situation well enough to know that one was needed to calm everyone down. “I also like my skull in one piece,” I added, “you nearly knocked me out and now my head is killing me.” And I’m low on magic fuel now, or at least it feels like it, I thought.

Someone chuckled, then someone else laughed, and in a few seconds all of the tension was gone again and the crowd was back to having fun. The previously jumpy soldiers began walking up to ask both Vaozey and me about the fight, what sorts of magic we were using, and how it worked. After what felt like an hour, they finally got bored and went back to beating each other with sticks. After that came wrestling, then some games involving levitating rocks and throwing them around, then finally Shahpao finally told everyone to get washed up and return to their shifts.

I didn’t end up having the conversation with Vaozey I wanted to have after the spar, and when I laid down in the hammock, it didn’t take me more than a few seconds to drift off into a dreamless sleep.

“You’re a bit different than I remember,” Vaozey remarked the next day as we were walking. It was about noon, and we were far to the back of the caravan, well out of earshot of everyone else for normal speaking volume. We had also gone offroad in the morning, so there was little chance anyone would pass by and hear us. “I wasn’t sure until we fought, but you’ve changed.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You were enjoying that spar last night,” she said. “Did you realize that you were smiling during it? Almost the whole time, in fact, you looked like you were having fun.” I did? I wondered, trying to recall. I hadn’t been paying much attention to my face at the time, except to avoid being hit. “It’s not a bad thing,” Vaozey said, taking my silence as something it wasn’t because both of our faces were hidden.

“It’s something I should be more aware of,” I replied. “So, how did you manage to make that defensive technique work? I understand what you’re doing, but it’s extremely energy intensive, and if you do it wrong you’ll just hurt yourself.”

“Not going to ask about the mace again?” Vaozey jabbed.

“That too,” I said.

“Well, that one’s easy enough,” Vaozey replied. “I kept breaking them, got too costly. After the noypeyyoyjh, I really got a feel for internal force magic, as you probably realized, and it helped a lot in battle. It did have some issues though, the main one being that I got strong enough to easily bend steel with my attacks. It got to the point where I was carrying around four or sometimes five maces every battle and returning with none because they all bent or snapped while I was fighting. It even became something of a joke between Mawyeyz and I.”

“Why not use a sword?” I asked.

“I’m not good with swords,” Vaozey chuckled. “Do you know why most kehpveht and yihzhae use single-handed weapons?” I looked over to see Vaozey’s helmet facing in my direction.

“I wasn’t aware they did,” I replied.

“Well, they do,” Vaozey said. “It’s because having a hand free is useful when you’re using combat magic because most people are more dexterous with magic near their hands. That npoyt in Owsahlk, for example, kept one hand free to use with his glass because it’s hard to manipulate. A ngoyw’dawpjh Rehvite keeps both hands free if possible-”

“A what?” I interrupted. The word didn’t sound like an expletive, but I wasn’t sure what it meant.

“Oh, right, you never learned what that technique was called,” Vaozey replied. “It’s slang for yahlao svaejhaaway, the technique R’vaajh Tahyn used when you fought him. We found out it had a name afterwards.” Many flying daggers? I thought, working on a translation.

“I don’t see how those terms are related,” I replied.

“Well, they usually keep about twenty-four of those feather blades on them,” Vaozey explained. “So, since a ngoywngeyt is twenty-four ngeyt-”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “We’re getting distracted.”

“Right,” Vaozey snorted. “Anyway, hands are easier to use magic with, and over time I sort of just gravitated towards punching rather than swinging a weapon. At first it was because I kept running out, but then I started to prefer it. I wasn’t that good with a mace either, I was just better with a mace than a sword. I’m somewhat bad at controlling any kind of weapon, but I can easily control my body.”

“Then you figured out how to cancel the impacts of your blows on yourself,” I guessed.

“Exactly,” Vaozey said, holding up a finger for a moment and then lowering it. “Koyl told me, after the battle at the noypeyyoyjh, about some things you said to him. One of them was about how forces came in pairs, so when you push something it pushes back. I realized that I could just push back again, but with magic, and protect my hands when I was hitting things by spreading out the impact along my body.”

“But how do you use it defensively?” I asked.

“Reflexes and feeling,” Vaozey replied, her tone suggesting she was smiling. “If you really want to know, I had some of Mawyeyz’s soldiers beat me with sticks like last night, over and over again for weeks. Now that I think of it, it was almost two months. By the end, I could practically feel the hits before they happened, even with my eyes closed, and I could push back against them without even thinking about it.” Sounds about right, I thought.

“I might have to try that myself,” I said. “It’s a useful technique.”

“At least your jokes are still awful,” Vaozey laughed, and I frowned under my helmet. I wasn’t joking, I thought.

“Am I really that different?” I asked.

“It’s not bad, trust me,” Vaozey replied.

“That’s not what I asked,” I said. “How do you perceive it? The difference, I mean.” Even though I couldn’t see her face, I could tell that Vaozey was frowning from the way she was standing, and the delay before her reply.

“Before, you were like an ideal,” she said. “Now though, you’re more like a person who trained to be that ideal every day of his life.”

“There are imperfections now, you mean,” I muttered, feeling a wave of dissatisfaction wash over me.

“Everyone has imperfections,” Vaozey replied. “You didn’t lack them before, and you don’t lack them now, they’ve just changed around a bit. Last night you spooked the soldiers pretty good when you cut half my arm off, but you knew how to defuse the situation. I don’t think you’d have known how to do that twelve years ago.” I hated that she was correct, and that she had managed to read me so well. The implied question that hung in the air was also clear, and I didn’t like that either.

“The god I spoke with was… disappointed in me,” I said quietly. “Not in my actions, but in my qualities. He was disappointed that I lacked things he considered important for a person to have.”

“Roydlow was?” Vaozey asked, equally quiet.

“He did something to me,” I said. “I noticed it too, I’m not the same as-”

“Alright! Everyone listen up!” Shahpao called from the front of the caravan, cutting me off. The caravan slowed to a halt, and soldiers groggily staggered out of the back of the barracks wagon to join up in a meeting with Shahpao while Vaozey and I walked over. “We will be in Rehvite territory in one hour,” Shahpao said. “You know what that means.”

“Repellent,” someone said.

“Rehvite uniform scent,” Shahpao corrected. “Everyone gets a cup, pour it over your head, work it into your armpits and groin. Zhoyv will now take over and remind you about the rest.” With that, he stepped away and a female soldier walked out of the crowd, taking his place.

“Who can tell me how kaebyaal ants track people?” she asked. Wise man ants? I translated, Is that what they call them now? The soldiers murmured, and then one spoke up.

“Scent, sight, and sound in that order,” he replied.

“Mostly right,” Zhoyv replied. “Scent is the primary way they have of determining one individual from another, and also determining who belongs to friend and enemy groups. The uniform scent will make you appear as though you are wearing the uniform of our enemies to them, hence the name. Sight and sound also work, but there are caveats. What are they?”

“They can’t see well,” someone else said, a woman this time.

“They can’t see details without forming an eye,” Zhoyv said. “Contrary to common belief, a single ant is more than capable of seeing a human target from fifty paces away, they just won’t be able to identify you or see any distinguishing features. The same goes for sound: They can hear you, but they can’t understand you very well. They know what human speech sounds like, but it takes them a lot of effort to comprehend it. Most colonies are not trained to understand Uwrish.”

“That means the orders to keep the chatter low get more serious now,” Shahpao interjected.

“If you see an ant that appears to be observing you, you will report it with gestures,” Zhoyv ordered. “If you see a group of ants that appear to be completely still, you will wait until they disperse and then report it with gestures. You will not panic and yell, nor will you act outwardly as though these things are unusual. Not all kaebyaal ants are overtly hostile or Rehvite aligned, but all of them do present a significant threat in various ways, though only if disturbed. Thus, we will not disturb them.”

“Is that understood?” Shahpao asked loudly.

“Yes sir,” every soldier except the two speakers answered in unison.

“Good, now get that gunk on you and get back to what you were doing,” Shahpao ordered. “The riskiest part of this journey happens in a few days. After that, we can relax a little bit.”