“The fated strike?” ZEKE asked, dryly.

  “Exactly. Luck and fate are strongly related. If he-” Kali’s grin faltered somewhat as his shoulder reached the peak of its rotation, then froze. Grabbing his wrist with his other arm, he briefly tried to pull it forward before wincing and saying, “Status” instead.

  Alarion tilted his head. “Are you alright?”

  “Just perfect,” the big man grunted in annoyance. He studied his screens for a moment, saw something he didn’t like, and then held out his wounded arm to Alarion. “Hold my wrist, please.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Just do it.”

  Alarion shrugged and took hold of Kali’s wrist. The Godborn nodded for Alarion to brace himself, then jerked back sharply, nearly pulling him out of the river as his shoulder reset with a sharp pop.

  “Ow.” Kali’s muted complaint didn’t match the sharp wince that crossed his features, but after a few slow rotations, the agony on his face abated enough for him to continue. “We’ve been building Lucky Strike toward a quantitative evolution with an emphasis on power over cooldown. Simply put, you’re too conservative with it.”

  “Always waiting for the right time,” Alarion agreed. The fact that he had only used the ability a handful of times in his duels with Kali had been one of the earliest flaws the Sergeant had pointed out. With a 60-second cooldown, he ought to be using it early and often in any fight, but he didn’t. More often than not, he waited for a moment that never came, and when he did use it, the time pressure and fear of waste made him sloppy.

  “Exactly. You’ll kill almost any peer opponent if you hit with it, but the activation time, cost, and short duration all work against you. You need something that enhances a hit, not something that enhances a strike.”

  Though ZEKE was unfamiliar with the peculiarities of Kali’s fighting style, he’d seen enough to deduce the man’s plan. “You want to connect Ebb and Flow to his perception of Inva-Maie and have this Vahr-Syl replace Lucky Strike as a killing blow. Is that accurate?”

  “Not quite. We could do that, but it would be by epiphanies alone, not an earned skill that combines them. I propose we make one the result of the other.”

  This time it was Alarion’s turn to ask the obvious, “How?”

  To his surprise, it was ZEKE that answered. Though it was with a question of his own. “How did you end up with Ebb and Flow?”

  “Single-Minded,” Alarion replied, his mood darkening as he remembered why it had happened. As with the initial choice of [Survivor], his flaw had made the decision for him in a life-or-death moment. Specifically, his battle with Sierra.

  “True, but why Ebb and Flow, and not some other skill?”

  That question was more complex, but not so hard that it took long to discover the answer. “I already felt like that was how fights progressed. A give and take.”

  “Which was why the skill was created in the first place,” ZEKE confirmed. “So much of the way an Awakened—especially a powerful Awakened—interacts with the System is based on perception. You felt an ebb and flow to combat, so it gave you a skill to reflect that. The Sergeant is indoctrinating you in order-“

  “I am not indoctrinated,” Alarion protested.

  “Immersing you, then,” ZEKE said in a tone that suggested that the correction was further from the truth, but not worth fighting over. “Regardless, by steeping you in this new understanding, he hopes to change that perception and thus its expression, much like how we aim to merge your classes.”

  “That feels too easy.”

  “Oh, it is,” Kali agreed. “We will have to alter old habits and instill new understanding. And if we do it wrong, we risk breaking your skills entirely.”

  “What?”

  ZEKE’s miniature form paced along the rushing river, glaring daggers up at Kali, “You did not need to tell the Young Master.”

  “He deserves to know the risks.”

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  “Did we not just finish talking about the power of perception?” ZEKE complained. “Scaring him by-“

  Alarion cut through the bickering, “How is it going to break my skills?”

  The two men glared at one another for a moment longer before ZEKE gestured toward Alarion, inviting Kali to do the convincing.

  “Ebb and Flow is a good skill, for what it is, but it is flawed,” the Godborn said as diplomatically as he could. “It works well in short bouts against unfamiliar opponents, but the way it forces you to fight becomes obvious after only one or two cycles. If you win quickly, it is good enough, but the longer you fight, the easier it becomes to exploit you, to say nothing of an opponent willing to bully their way through your offensive phase.”

  “That is not an-“

  “To retrain it, we will need you to go against the current,” Kali continued over Alarion’s objections. “Days spent going against the instincts of your skill while you focus instead on the ebb and flow of the Inva-Maie. The sympathy between the two is good, which would make it easy to earn an epiphany, but working toward an earned skill will put you at risk. If the skill never materializes, your Ebb and Flow might never advance. Even worse, it might evolve to a broken version, one halfway between what it was and what we want.”

  “The risk is not inconsiderable,” ZEKE added. “Though given your extensive history of exceeding expectations, you have my full faith.”

  Was that pride? Or was the Steelborn just buttering him up?

  “Lucky Strike is at considerably less risk,” Kali said, as if to seal the deal. “Not zero, but our goal there would be to add conditions to activation, not fundamentally change its use.”

  “It is your choice, of course,” said ZEKE.

  Alarion was old enough to recognize when he was being led to a conclusion. Fortunately for them, it was a conclusion he agreed with.

  “Is this the part where you explain why we are freezing in the river?”

  Kali chuckled, “I was wondering when you’d ask.”

  “I thought it might just be scenic.”

  “I thought you tried not to lie.” The big man shook his head wryly as he began wading for the shore in search of another wooden rod. “When I was little-“

  “I find it hard to believe you were ever little,” said ZEKE.

  “When I was young,” Kali grumbled. “My brothers and I used to travel with our father, from spring through summer, as he visited schools all around the Principalities. He was an excellent, though unawakened swordsman who spent most of his time tutoring those of low system rank but high social status. He didn’t want us following in his footsteps, so we were never allowed to train, but I spent years watching his methods and learning his philosophy.”

  Kali plucked another wooden rod, this one shorter and thicker than his previous weapon, and gave it a few test swings on the shoreline. Alarion had a sneaking suspicion Kali held a slight grudge about his shoulder.

  “One of his favorite methods for teaching involved a still pond. Many of his aspirants were newly Awakened and rather full of themselves. Impatient, really. So, he brought them into a pond and had them wait for the surface to calm. They would have one second to fight, then they’d stop and wait for it to calm once again. It gave them time to consider their next move, the counter to that move, the counter to that counter, and so on. The ripples, likewise, made for a simple way to visualize the clash of Inva-Maie, with each action colliding against an opposition.”

  Alarion looked around, then said the obvious. “I do not think the river is going to calm.”

  “It was inspiration, not…” Kali sighed as he waded back into the river about two dozen yards upstream of the ford. The water there was deeper, nearly up to his knees or Alarion’s hips. The ground was also considerably less stable, judging by the way Kali took care to adjust his footing before he said, “Come at me.”

  With no reason to refuse, Alarion obeyed.

  It was a miserable attempt. Walking against the current was not difficult, but it—and the loose silt underfoot—played havoc with the fine-tuned balance and timing required to fight someone of Kali’s calibre. Even with [Ebb and Flow] working to enhance his offensive power, Alarion struggled to apply any meaningful pressure.

  The Godborn had no such issue. Kali was taller, stronger, and more comfortable in the water. He pummeled Alarion around the head, neck, and shoulders with ease and regularity, pulling each strike so that the sting of impact came with matching humiliation.

  Kali was definitely holding a grudge.

  Still, it was a far cry from the weeks of abuse he’d endured while improving his defensive skills. There, the damage had been the point; here, it was instructional. Kali wasn’t hitting him for the sake of hitting him, but to convey a message; his guard was open, his footwork sloppy, his spacing wrong. They were familiar lessons, a reminder of his early days with ZEKE—albeit with less taunting—but Alarion did not fully understand them until Kali swung wide around him in a few broad strides.

  The repositioning put Alarion’s back to the water, disrupting his growing rhythm right as [Ebb and Flow] cycled from offense to defense.

  “Literally against the current,” Alarion grunted in equal parts understanding and annoyance. It shouldn’t have taken him nearly that long to make the connection.

  “I knew you’d catch on,” Kali chuckled, retreating in the face of Alarion’s renewed advance.

  Having the water at his back was hardly an improvement as far as Alarion was concerned. With [Ebb and Flow] working against him, this should have been his time to fight defensively, to exhaust Kali’s resources and build his own back up. Instead, it pushed him forward, drove him into the attack, and punished him with delayed reactions every time he tried to retreat.

  Of course, water wouldn’t have trumped a System-granted skill all by itself. Even with the river fighting against him, [Ebb and Flow] would have made him better on the defense, but Kali would have none of that. He was barely attacking, meeting passivity with passivity for thirty seconds until the skill—and their positions—switched again, and the violence renewed.

  It was going to be a long afternoon.