Displaced

Chapter 21

"Arlette, what the hell is going on?" hissed Sofie under her breath. "Did I hear her right? There's an invasion coming? Did you know about this?"

The two of them sat against a wall in a second octagonal room adjacent to the state room where they'd first met the crazy giant beastwoman Akhustal Palebane. Unlike the first room, which was adorned with evidences of conquests and victories, this room was entirely barren save for a strange wooden floor that felt almost like rock to the touch. Basilli and Pari sat alongside them, their eyes on the pair of Jaquet and Akhustal.

"Later," Arlette Faredin whispered in return, her attention never leaving the pair of warriors in the center of the room. This whole "invasion" thing was a huge deal worth stressing out over, but she didn't want to miss the action about to unfold before her eyes. There was a chance that she'd be able to see something that she'd never seen before: Jaquet losing a one-on-one fight.

She'd sparred with Jaquet numerous times over the years but never once had she come out on top. Her usual formula for success — using illusions to get the opponent on the back foot and then overwhelming them with a series of simultaneous real and fake attacks that forced the opponent to choose which to guard against over and over until they chose incorrectly — didn't work against him. When presented with two identical Arlettes and given the choice of which to attack, he would choose both, swinging his massive halberd in an arc through both targets with incredible quickness. Other Feelers didn't give her this problem, but Jaquet's combination of strength, speed, and skill presented a challenge unlike any other. His strength let him wield a massive weapon with great reach, while his skill allowed him to attack at any angle and his quickness made it incredibly hard to avoid the strikes. If she could get in past a Feeler's guard, they were as good as done, but with him it was like there was an invisible wall there that prevented her from getting anywhere close.

Without her illusions, she was just a normal woman with a longsword, faster and more agile than most, but still nothing worth getting excited over. A normal swordswoman could not beat somebody on Jaquet's level. The man was a monster, even as past his prime as he was now. Arlette estimated that perhaps three or four other Feelers in Nocend could hold their own against him mano-a-mano, and that was it. One of those people stood across from him now.

While Jaquet Delon was a monster, Akhustal Palebane ate monsters for breakfast — sometimes literally. One of the largest reasons that Stragma structured its society around martial prowess was that the forest of Stragma teemed with dangerous giant beasts. Arlette hadn't seen many on the way south — avoiding such creatures was a priority when traveling through the forest — but the Stragmans had told her plenty of stories about them while they went. Some you ate, some ate you; all were huge and dangerous and, at least if the stories were to be believed, absolutely hideous. The better that you could hunt those beasts, and protect yourself and others from them, the higher your caste. Atop that social pyramid stood Palebane, the strongest warrior in a population of sixteen million people. Legend had it that she'd killed a ronutepo, the same massive acid-spitting animal that the group had been lucky to defeat, all by her lonesome when she was just twelve years old.

Looking at the beastwoman, Arlette believed it. Palebane dwarfed her opponent by a comical degree, her body a mountain of muscle. The massive club, which she somehow carried as if it were made of paper, was itself taller and wider than Arlette as a whole.

"Ready?" the Stragman leader asked, taking a stance, her right arm holding the club out towards Jaquet at an upward angle.

"Aye," responded her opponent, taking his own stance, knees bent, both hands holding his halberd outward and parallel to the floor.

They stared at each other for a moment, motionless, sizing each other up, before Jaquet suddenly burst into action, his weapon arcing through the air in a series fast and powerful strikes, each move flowing into the next like water. Without batting an eye, Akhustal parried each of them to the side as if they were nothing, before retaliating with a horizontal swing of her own. Jaquet shifted his stance, turning to face the blow with one foot in front of the other while rotating his weapon vertically, and blocked the club with the halberd's shaft. His eyes shot open with shock as his arms buckled from the blow and the club smashed into his torso, sending him shooting through the air to crash into a wall on the other side of the room.