Chapter 33 — Sylan Kyle Von Noctis vs Elias Vaughn, 2
The ether within the coliseum's basin congealed with the portent of anvils poised above the forge, a thickening pall akin to nimbus clouds compacted against unyielding granite—oppressive, gravid, the prelude to a deluge that would scour the firmament. The multitude's erstwhile torrent of acclamation and aspersion had attenuated to a ragged susurrus: fragmentary inhalations, the sibilant hush of whispers exchanged in the galleries' shadowed crevices, a collective respiration snared in the vise of incredulity. No soul amid the throng—neither the patricians ensconced in their ormolu loges, nor the plebeians thronging the pit's squalor—had augured such prolongation; this fray was scripted for swift adjudication, a vignette of hegemony scripted in sanguine strokes, not the inexorable grind of equals assayed in the crucible of perpetuity.
Steel clashed anew—
CLANG!
Pyrotechnic efflorescences cascaded in a stellar profusion, coruscations birthing from the cataclysmic juncture where Elias Vaughn's argent falchion pulverized against Sylan Kyle Von Noctis's bulwark—a parry forged in the instant's extremity. The repercussive onslaught propagated through Sylvian's radii and humeri, a seismic undulation that contused osseous lattice against ligamentous moorings, yet his emplacement endured, unfractured by the inertial maelstrom. His greaves emitted a strident ululation against the porphyry's implacable plane, retroceding half a metric span in a plume of pulverulent ejecta before volition—raw, unalloyed—anchored him anew, heels excavating furrows into the detritus-riven arroyo.
"...He persists."
That murmur disseminated through the amphitheater like conflagration upon tinder: a spark from the bourgeois strata, igniting the undercroft's morass where plebeians—mere moments prior murmuring supplications for the Noctis scion's perdurance—now inclined in rapt fascination, orbs dilated to saucers of unadorned awe. Patricians in the upper echelons recoiled in affronted umbrage, their sneers contorting into masks of indignation at the fray's recalcitrance, the spectacle's refusal to conform to the choreography of celeritous subjugation; yet others, ensnared in the inexorable allure of authenticity, found themselves inexorably enthralled, grim resolve etching their features as if beholding the unscrolling of a forbidden codex.
Amanda Von Noctis's timbre lacerated the muffled ether like a stiletto through brocade, her proclamation attenuated yet unerring, pitched to the sanctum of her aerie. "Pitiable... He ekes out existence like a cur lashed to the post, naught but the basest facsimile of defiance. This is no apotheosis of dominion—it is the farce of forbearance. He ought to be inundating him, eclipsing that whelp in a torrent of unmitigated supremacy." Her gloved phalanges excavated crescents into the armrest's mahogany arabesque, nacreous talons indenting the patina with the fervor of one who assayed the wood as proxy for her progeny's presumed frailty. Each systole wherein her scion repudiated prostration registered not as fortitude, but as exacerbation—a prolongation that transmuted familial prestige into the currency of communal derision.
At her flank, Darius Von Noctis proffered no riposte, his countenance a monolith hewn from the quarries of reticence—features immutable as basalt, shadowed by the fall of sable tresses, orbs of obsidian depth surveying the basin with the somnolent acuity of one who had presided over a hundred salients, from the quagmires of contested vales to the ramparts of besieged citadels. In the subtle contraction of his mandible—a filament of tension Amanda, in her monomania, overlooked entirely—lurked a contraband sentiment: approbation, distilled and unadorned. His heir assayed not the effete posturings of the salon, nor the frantic scrabblings of the trepid; he contended as the anvil's progeny, tempered in crucibles unchronicled, perduring amid the gale's onslaught.
SHRRRKKK!
Elias's falchion inscribed a parabolic trajectory of such alacrity that the ether rent asunder in a keening ululation— a sonic laceration evocative of riven firmaments, the vacuum's collapse a harbinger of the cataclysm it heralded. Sylan gyrated in extremis, his acromion ablaze with the frictional inferno as the keen skimmed his weskit in a whisper of severance, broadcloth parting like mist before the scythe. He countermanded in fluid reciprocity, descending into a crouch of predatory economy, his own length darting forth like the asp's fang toward the unguarded intercostal nexus of Elias's flank.
CLANG!
Elias contorted with the impassive exactitude of the virtuoso, his edge interposing in a deflection that married serendipity to sovereignty—their scrutinies converging in the interspace, a parry of gazes as unyielding as the metallurgy's kiss.
Elias's argentine orbs—heretofore the repositories of glacial discipline, slate veined with the uninflected rectitude of the paladin—ignited now with an emergent luminescence: the alacrity of epiphany, the thrill of the anvil assayed against a peer. He redoubled the tempest, his falchion intoning a canticle of savagery, each incursion a fluvial cataclysm—cascading, unbridled, freighted with accretive impetus. The onslaught escalated in inexorable gradation: mass compounding, acuity honing to monomolecular peril, velocity a blur that assayed the thresholds of perception, impelling Sylan toward the precipice of dissolution.
And yet, Sylan perdured.
His cognition was a sanctum of equanimity, each inhalation calibrated to the litany of the line—nasal ingress, oral egress—a metronome against the fray's cacophony. Each riposte was an equation of prescience: leverage vectors, fulcrum points, the infinitesimal azimuth of the adversary's pivot. The internal battlefield thrummed with vestiges from an antecedent incarnation—instincts annealed in the mud-slicked furrows of alien salients, where survival was not the largesse of thews, but the sovereignty of the synapse.
'He forgoes the condescension afforded the dilettantes... No quarter, no attenuation. Salutary. This is the crucible I sought.'
Elias propelled a lunge—BOOOM!—the percussive nadir of his descent pulverizing against Sylvian's guard with the inexorability of a trebuchet's counterweight, the inertial maelstrom birthing a plume of detritus that enshrouded the basin in ochre pall. The coliseum aspired in visceral unity, a monolithic inhalation freighted with the portent of culmination.
Yet Sylan endured.
Yet he elevated his length anew, the en garde a bastion unbreached.
The susurrus burgeoned to a cascade now, inundating Amanda's contorted visage like the tide's inexorable advance.
"He persists—" "Nay, he transcends perdurance. He parries the paragon—" "An impossibility. Elias Vaughn concedes no equipoise—"
The patrician strata fractured into schisms of hauteur and heresy, sneers curdling into masks of apostasy. The plebeian undercroft detonated in resurgence, ululations ascending in polyphonic rapture with each contrapuntal clash of metallurgy.
CLANG! CLANG! THRUMMMM!
Each percussive nadir resounded like the knell of tempests, each gyration a tableau vivant of paladins unbowed—contours etched in the choreography of defiance, sinews inscribed with the lexicon of unyielding mettle.
Amanda inclined further, her timbre a distillate of toxin, laced with the asp's sibilance. "Do you perceive it, Darius? He protracts the farce, transmuting our aegis into the jest of the galleries. Should he fail to pulverize that upstart, should he falter in the sacrament of supremacy—"
Yet Darius's perusal remained riveted upon the arroyo, an unswerving lodestar. His labella modulated in a murmur attenuated to the threshold of audition, a cipher pitched for the ether's interstices, scarcely discernible to Amanda's monomaniacal ear.
"He assays his mettle. To my satisfaction, at least."
Her pate pivoted in abrupt asperity, orbs flaring wide in the incredulity of betrayal, yet he proffered no amplification—his silence a citadel, impregnable.
SCREEECH!
Elias's length pulverized against Sylvian's in a catenaccio of metallurgy, edges grinding in a susurrus of frictional perdition, countenances separated by mere inches—their respirations ragged symphonies, diaphoresis tracing rivulets along temples like the tributaries of exertion's deluge.
"You diverge from archetype," Elias enunciated, timbre equable yet inflected with the frisson of authenticity, a thrill distilled from the fray's rarefied yield. "Antecedents disintegrate beneath the assay. You... you perdure. You contend as one who has assayed the maw of authentic ordeal."
Sylvian's crimson orbs contracted to slits, the retort emerging not in vituperation, but in the unvarnished reciprocity of combatants forged in parallel crucibles. "And you assail as one predestined to reforge this dominion." He propelled the countermand, dentition bared in the grimace of exertion, his proclamation a grapnel cast across the gulf—not derision, but the solemnity of peers. "Nascent Sword Saint. I shall hew a trajectory contiguous to yours—volitional or no."
Elias's labella quivered in the subtlest flexion—a rarity, an efflorescence of fraternal approbation. Then he repelled with concussive finality, the impetus a seismic expulsion that propelled Sylan retrograde across the basin's expanse.
The coliseum detonated in resurgence as Sylan skidded upon the porphyry, patellae buckling toward genuflection—yet arresting the descent, length braced in the arroyo's detritus, orbs riveted upon Elias in unswerving defiance.
Elias exsufflated with deliberate modulation, his nimbus transmuting.
The chevalier's stoic armature hemorrhaged into a keener luminescence, a fiercer coruscation. His palm migrated along the hilt's chamfered length, emplacement settling with an acuity that bordered on prescience. The argent edge quivered—then ignited.
Initially attenuated. Then accruing incandescence. Then incandescent to the verge of ocular scourge.
Effulgence cascaded from the metallurgy, parabolic arcs of radiance rending the ether with electrostatic ululation. The coliseum's very substrate appeared to genuflect beneath the gravitational anomaly, the blaze a nascent aurora that devoured umbrae, subsuming the galleries in a dawn's inexorable advance emanated from a solitary paladin's armamentarium.
Amanda surged erect, her proclamation lancing the maelstrom like a dirk through gossamer. "At last. At last, the whelp shall be unmade!"
Darius reclined incrementally, orbs contracting to slits, his perusal an unblinking vigil.
Elias elevated the length to the meridian, timbre resounding across the basin in a clarion untainted by hauteur or malice—solely the paladin's fiat, the inexorable pronouncement of adjudication rendered.
"—Radiant Severance!"
The falchion descended.
WHHHRRRRRRRRRMMMMMMM!
The coruscation detonated in cataclysmic profusion, parabolic arcs of sanctified incandescence lacerating the firmament, velocity such that the cosmos appeared bifurcated—a schism of light and perdition. The percussive nadir alone fissured the porphyry in radial cleavage, undulatory shockwaves battering the galleries' tympana in a symphony of sonic evisceration.
The populace ululated: some in the rapture of theophany, others in the visceral terror of apocalypse.
And Sylan...
Sylan congealed amid the maelstrom, crimson orbs dilated to abyssal gulfs, the soldier's intellect honing to monomolecular acuity. His instincts ululated in primal chorus, myofibrils recoiling in vigilant spasm. Every filament of his soma cognized the verity—this transcended the divertissement of the lists, the exhibition of the salon.
This was the scythe of dissolution descending.
The incursion accelerated toward him, a cataract of sanctified blaze and incisive finality, evocative of the celestial fiat incarnate.