Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee

Veric and Freya step into the circle without hurrying.

That alone tells me a lot about this fight. For comparison, Kellan had entered the draw braced to get hit. Oliver had entered the way a loyal follower accepts his leader’s whims. But Veric and Freya step in like duelists who know everyone is watching, and neither intends to grant the other the courtesy of looking nervous.

I prepare the Nomine Gladiatus leather with both names and set the wager at two percent. Even with Freya at Rank C, Veric carries full Rank B equipment. They’re strong enough to lose that much without breaking stride, but too proud to accept one percent without treating the rule as an insult.

The Diver Marks touch the leather. The rune burns and the bond closes.

Freya draws a thin rapier, almost too elegant for her personality. The blade has a cold sheen, but there’s no visible ice yet. That’s the warning: she thinks Veric doesn’t deserve the scythe.

Veric notices. His face doesn’t change, but Undertow appears on his left arm with a weight that shifts his whole posture. The Rank B shield doesn’t look built for a tournament. It looks built to stand between a person and a tragedy. It has already held the impact of a Rank C Reef Stalker. A rapier won’t frighten him. But Freya doesn’t seem interested in frightening.

She wants to dismantle.

"Begin," I say.

Freya goes first.

There’s no charge. She enters on two short steps, her narrow frame tucked behind the line of the blade. The rapier drives at Veric’s wrist, not his chest. He turns Undertow a few degrees, enough for the point to slide off the curved edge without finding flesh. Freya is already withdrawing as the metal scrapes, pivoting off her left diagonal to strike his lead knee.

Veric doesn’t chase. He only retreats half a step and drops the shield.

The point touches metal again, and Freya smiles.

The silence after the parry hangs heavy.

She attacks the collarbone, then the lower rib, then the inside of the thigh. Short lines, fast, all aimed where a big shield tends to arrive late. Veric doesn’t try to match her speed. He lets Undertow work with angle and distance. Sometimes he moves the shield. Sometimes he moves the body behind it.

The difference between moving the shield and moving himself looks subtle, but it isn’t.

Moving the shield defends the first blow. Moving the body defends the next. It’s a pattern. And it seems Freya hasn’t caught it yet.

She thinks she’s testing Veric’s defense. Veric is letting her write her own pattern into the metal.

The rapier touches Undertow three more times. Wrist, knee, shoulder. After each thrust, Freya exits along the same diagonal. Not identical enough to look like an error, but similar enough for a patient man to measure. Veric is irritating, proud, and sometimes dramatic, but he isn’t stupid. His talent isn’t in looking brilliant. It’s in surviving long enough that everyone else’s brilliance starts to look like a cheap promotion.

Freya advances again.

This time, ice grows at the rapier’s tip.

The first thrust leaves a white line on Undertow’s edge. The second scatters fine frost near the grip. The third comes low, aiming at the knee, and when Veric blocks, the ice clings to the metal half a second longer than it should.

She isn’t trying to pierce the shield. She’s trying to slow it.

If Veric’s defense arrives half a second behind his body, the rapier doesn’t need to be strong. It only needs to land clean once.

His arm starts to grow heavy. A layer of ice builds where the shield needs to pivot freely. Freya sees it and raises the tempo, thrusting now less to wound and more to pin. Veric’s shield becomes a target, not an obstacle.

"Freya," I say.

She doesn’t take her eyes off him.

"If you keep fighting the version of Veric in your head, the real one will put you down before you notice."

Her smile hardens. Veric doesn’t thank me. Good. I’m not trying to distract her or help him. I just want a real fight.

Even so, he uses the instant her irritation breaks her rhythm.

Freya comes in with a straight thrust to the chest, the first one truly committed. Veric lets the shield look slow. The frost on the edge helps the lie. At the last moment, he releases the rigid line of his arm and lets Undertow drop a handspan, pulling the frozen weight downward. The magic current bound to the shield flares and answers the motion.

Freya advances expecting resistance. She finds emptiness.

Undertow drops and returns in a low arc, not against her blade but against the space of her dodge. Freya tries to repeat the left diagonal, but the shield is already there. She twists her hip to escape, losing the rapier’s clean line. Undertow’s edge passes flush against her body and shears a strip from the side of her jacket.

No damage. A warning.

Freya leaps back, ice bursting under her feet for distance before the current can carry the shield back to Veric’s hand.

Her smile is gone. For the first time, she looks at Veric without treating the shield as a crutch.

"You were counting."

Veric seats Undertow on his arm again. "You were repeating."

She lets out a short, joyless laugh.

The rapier advances again, but now there’s anger in the tempo. It makes her faster and less clean. Veric holds the first sequence with a block, gives ground on the second by slipping aside, and when he blocks the third, he steps his body behind the shield to occupy the center of the circle.

He doesn’t need to hit her. He only needs to push her where he wants.

Freya realizes it late.

Another thrust comes for the throat. Veric doesn’t raise Undertow. He hurls it. The shield flies past the line of her strike, and the current chained between his forearm and its back face whips out behind it, coiling around the thin blade in the same motion. For an instant, both of them are disarmed. Then Veric yanks the chain.

The rapier is dragged toward him, and Freya with it.

Freya plants herself and holds. The pull doesn’t topple her, but it commits her weight forward and costs her the clean line of the rapier. Veric doesn’t fight that. He rides the same yank he threw, letting the recoil of the chain carry him in rather than haul her out. Freya drags ice up from the ground to lock his approach. Veric doesn’t fight the white plate spreading under his boot. He turns his heel, accepts the loss of traction, and converts the slide into a lateral step.

It’s the right call. Most people would try to stop. Veric uses the bad footing as part of the step.

With the chain still binding the rapier, Veric drives his shoulder into Freya’s guard, closing her line. The rapier ends up off-center. Her body opens for a fraction. Veric draws the short gladius with his right hand.

I see Freya’s eyes follow it. But it’s too late.

The gladius tip stops less than a finger from the line beneath her collarbone, where a real thrust would slip between armor and bone. At the same time, the chain holds the rapier wrenched outside her defensive line.

If I judged it then, I could end it. But with her free hand, Freya forms a thick block of ice where the gladius would land. Not a clean decision.

Veric arrived first. Freya goes still for half a second. Not from fear. From surprise.

"Careful," Veric says, low. "You might end up learning something."

The temperature drops.

Freya abandons the rapier. With nothing left to bind, the chain goes slack, and Undertow snaps back along it to Veric’s arm. Ice climbs her free hand, sheathing the skin. The thin frost cracks into white light and lengthens, curving into a scythe of ice. The air around the circle turns drier, colder, and the tip of Veric’s gladius trembles as the pressure shifts.

I don’t call the end. Veric understands why.

His blade arrived first, but Freya hasn’t accepted the loss. The vow is still whole, and that half-second of surprise vanishes from her face as if it had never existed.

Knowing the risk, Veric jumps back as she grips the scythe with both hands.

Now, then. Freya has stopped playing.

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