Light of the Heavens

XXIV. Tie-Breaker

"What if he hurts you?" Seben asked with worry, hovering near Vassa as she stretched out her shoulders. Her back still ached from contact with the ripping power of the ward, the last remnant of its power not quite banished by alchemical healing.

Vassa looked at her companion with a hint of amusement curling the corners of her lips behind her mask. "So eager to leap to my defense?" she said. "Perhaps you should take my place in the ring. That could be entertaining."

"I mean it," Seben said firmly, looking over at Rhujag. "He's huge and I don't think he's slow."

"I am more than capable of seeing to my own defense," Vassa said, still amused by Seben's fretting. It was rather endearing, even if she would never say so. "I am merely grateful that Lord Osei and Djau stepped out this morning to gather intelligence on the assassination attempt on our blood mage ally. I prefer not to display my tricks to an audience unless the situation requires it."

Seben nodded hesitantly, a bit of curiosity slipping out. "I suppose I haven't seen everything you're capable of."

"You never will," Vassa said, slipping her sword-belt off. She ran fingertips lovingly over the hilt of her shortsword, the rayskin wrapping of the handle almost smooth from use. It had been bound and rebound many times since its reforging by her dwarven acquaintance in the north. The blade had followed her since her birth, a last relic of her heritage and the life she'd lived before her training sapped the light from her. She set it down carefully on the floor beside her outer shirt, though she was still covered from head to toe in fabric that shrouded her from the world. "I promise."

"You're very attached to that blade," Seben observed instead of pressing on Vassa. Her sense for the masked woman's boundaries grew every day and she likely knew that Vassa was referring to the darker magics she was capable of using. What she'd seen already was fuel for the occasional nightmares.

"A saress is more than a blade," Vassa said, sliding the blade out of the sheath. It was featherlight in her hands. "It is memory. This steel served zhendai like myself for thousands of years before I was born. They are relics now, things that survived the destruction of the First World, gifts of the Life-Giver in the war between gods and demons."

Seben tilted her head as she looked at the blade, watching sunlight glitter on the razor-sharp edge, the reflection refracted by the scars on the steel. "It looks like it was damaged and repaired."

"It was," Vassa said. She hated the memory of Lysaerys shattering her blade in front of her. In that moment, she would have rather had her heart ripped out and shredded. Fortunately, Sethon had showered her with the broken pieces as an insult as he left her broken body at the threshold of her exile. His arrogance allowed her to recover all the fragments in order to have them repaired. She smiled faintly, brushing her thumb over the flat of the blade. "They each have their own qualities. No two are identical, even if they appear to be, and they change depending on their wielder. This one, Naesha'an, was a thing of fire and fury in the hands of the one who came before me."

"And what is it now?"

"Shadow. Illusion. Deception." Vassa sheathed the blade. "I have an orc to amuse, Seben. You may wish to stand back, lest the blood splash on your nice clothing."

"Your blood or mine?" Rhujag said with a deep chuckle as he approached.

Vassa shrugged expressively, lips tugging into a faint smile. "Yes."

"That is your favored weapon, yes?" Rhujag said, gesturing to the blade.

"It is," Vassa said. She'd always preferred the saress. It had less reach than a longsword, but that was no problem for a woman who could close distance the way she could. "Yourself?"