Gilded Ashes: When Shadows Reign

A vertical pipe at the rooftop's southern edge - Lay caught it on her sixth pass, both spiked blades hooking around the pipe at speed, her body spinning around the steel column. She made a full rotation around the pipe in less than a quarter of a second. The momentum she carried out of the spin doubled. When she released - her blades coming free of the pipe in the moment of maximum velocity - she flew across the rooftop in a flat, horizontal line that hit Osamu in the chest before he could raise the shield.

He went backward. The barrier formed reflexively in front of him, but Lay was already way past it, the spin having carried her around the field's projection radius before he could close it. She landed on the rooftop behind him.

Her left blade swept upward at the back of his neck.

It wasn't a lethal hit – not aimed for the jugular vein, but rather aimed for his nerves, opting for a quick takedown, making him unconscious.

Osamu caught it on the shield, but barely. The weapon's edge passed through the failed field and rang off the alloy of the shield itself, a centimetre from Osamu's spine. He turned for a counterattack, but she was already gone again.

She used the next pipe. Then the next. The rooftop became a blur of motion - Lay's cloak catching the building's edge lights below, the curved blades flashing in tight, rotational arcs, her body spinning between fixed anchor points and using the rotational momentum to launch herself at the two Phalanx from angles that should not have normally existed.

Kori caught one of her blades on the eighth pass.

It was not a parry. It was a catch. Kori had read the angle of Lay's incoming strike with the Chasmis open at full output, and instead of deflecting the blade she had reached out with her left hand and closed her fingers around the flat of the Damascus steel as it came toward her. The blade was sharp, and the compromise was a long, deep cut across the inside of Kori's palm.

She pulled with the tips of her fingers, trying not to deepen the cut even more.

Lay's momentum, redirected through the caught blade, broke. Her body twisted as Kori dragged her arm forward and down, and as if that wasn't enough, Kori brought her right chain-knife around in a hammering motion that drove the pommel into Lay's chest and slammed her down into the rooftop. The alloy cracked beneath Lay's back. Kori's left palm - bleeding now, the cut from the blade streaming red down her wrist - came across Lay's throat to pin her in place.

But Lay just couldn't be pinned - she pivoted on her own shoulder, her right blade still in her right hand. Her body twisted out of Kori's hold with the boneless mobility of a fighter who had trained against ground pins specifically and knew exactly how to break them. Kori's forearm went past her throat as Lay rolled sideways; Kori's knee slipped on the cracked roof as Lay's body torqued beneath her. The pin failed in less than half a second.

Then Osamu appeared out of nowhere.

What happened next, Kori experienced as a sequence of impacts: Osamu's shield came in, Lay deflected it with her left blade, the deflection carried into a counter-strike that Osamu caught on a barrier, the barrier broke under the force of the blade and Osamu took a shallow cut across his ribs, his next strike landing on Lay's shoulder and driving her into a pipe. The pipe bent, Lay came off the pipe with both blades up and crossed steel with Osamu in a flurry of exchanges that lasted maybe four seconds but contained more individual attacks than Kori could track. The Chasmis broke them down as best it could. Sparks rose off the rooftop. Blood scattered across the alloy in fine, fast lines. Both bodies cut, both bodies bleeding, both bodies still moving.

The exchange ended with all three of them pulling back.

Three metres of distance between Lay and the two Phalanx. The rooftop scarred with cuts, dents, and Eon residue. Osamu's shield was lowered. His chest was rising and falling dragging breaths – he was at the edge of his stamina, the long cut along his ribs bleeding steadily into his torn clothes, his upper arm wearing a long cut, his lower back bruising. Kori's left hand was a wet red mess from the blade catch, the cut already pumping blood through her fingers. Her shoulder, hip, and shin still bled from the earlier wounds. Both Phalanx had taken more damage than they had inflicted.

Lay stood in the centre.

Her cloak was shredded along the right side. Blood ran from at least seven separate cuts. Her left forearm trembled - the only visible sign of fatigue she had shown all night. Both blades were still in her hands. Both legs still held her weight.

But she was breathing through the mask. The breathing was deep, ragged.

Nobody moved.

Kori looked at her.

Lay looked back.

Across the gap, Kori's eyes moved once toward the western edge of the rooftop. A small flick. The kind of motion that another fighter, who had been reading her body language all night, would catch and parse correctly without it needing to be said.

Go.

Now, while you still have the chance.

I'll handle the rest.

Lay's expression didn't change beneath the mask. But her head dipped, the smallest possible nod, visible only with the Chasmis, and her right hand made a series of quick gestures that Kori didn't recognise - three fingers down, then a knuckle facing her, then the middle three fingers all extended up. The gestures were precise, they meant something. Lay was telling Kori something with them, in a language Kori didn't speak.

Then Lay turned and ran. She crossed the rooftop in two steps, vaulted the western parapet, and was gone into the city beyond it before Osamu had finished raising his shield to throw or generate another forcefield.

Kori turned to face him.

"She was too fast."

Osamu studied her for a long moment.

His expression did not change. But his eyes moved across Kori's face with the slow, careful attention of a Phalanx who had worked with her for fifteen years and was capable of recognizing when she was lying to him.

He didn't say anything… And lowered the shield.

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