[Skell]
Thorny wood wove around me in a tangled labyrinth. I stood at the field's epicenter. Captured. Helpless. Forced to watch unsalvageable defeat twist overhead.
Niles' vine reared back, preparing to lash what little of my body poked over the briars. Power built as it coiled tight. Tighter. Tighter still.
Abyss! There's gotta be someway out of this! I shifted slightly in the cage of thorns. My orange ward cried immediately, pressed into by a set of briars I couldn't even turn to see. Come on, Skell! Think! You're a sitting duc-
The thought went forever unfinished. Vine Cling unleashed stored power that thrust it at my face with wind-splitting speed.
I was clever. But I couldn't snap miracles into existence. So with my hamstrung body, I performed the one action left to me:
Glaring daggers at the two-faced snake across the arena.
His vine hurtled into me right after.
Then… hurtled right back out.
Only thing to hit me was confusion. I felt nothing. Neither did my ward.
But Niles sure did.
"Agh!" a glove snapped to his forehead. The vine extending from his sleeve went haywire overhead. Green granules flaked off its fading surface. By then, it all started to dawn on me. He didn't miss; he struck dead-on…
Niles, however, was running dangerously low on mana.
That's right! He's been slinging arts left and right all day! He's gotta have a lot of mana. But nobody's limitless.
Above, Niles' vine withered into immaterial green wisps, as solid as the thoughts passing through his skull. Then they vanished entirely.
Relief warmed my icy bones. I was safe. At least for now.
Winces scrunched Niles' shaking face. Somewhere within a barrage of blinks, he found a handhold of composure. "Mmrgh - damned throbbing head! Focus!" His grey eyes rose to retake mine. "Don't think you're outta the woods, dark mage. Maybe I don't have the mana for Vine Cling. But for this, all I need is a spark."
He closed pained eyes. Then lifted his index finger between them.
"Wick…"
The tiniest flame ignited to dance on his fingertip.
In another time, I would've scoffed at the sight. A fire like that'd barely scare a candle. But here and now? I'd have turned stiff as a tree if that fate hadn't already been forced on me.
"Wait!" I said. "Stop it!"
Niles didn't hesitate to stand just outside of his Briar Patch. His finger-flame rose to lick at the furthest thorn of the dry bramble. Niles' lips pursed, blowing soft air to fuel the flare. And as the wood caught ablaze, I could almost feel the color draining from my face.
Shade - no!
The swordsman made a tour of walking alongside the patch's edge, setting the briars aflame from every angle. In under a minute I was doubly trapped - not just in a prison of wood, but in an ever-growing wildfire that threatened to consume me once it crawled to the patch's center.
Niles grimaced at the ring of flame, tapping a boot at its slow-paced smoldering. "It'll close in soon enough," his words seemed to be for us both. "Just sit tight."
Like I've got a choice! No - concentrate. You've got time now! Use it!
I ran through my options like a hand of bad cards. Bramble entangled my legs and half-folded arms, leaving just my head and hands free. Hands that weren't of any use. Niles' sword was just out of reach ahead. It'd take forever to snap enough briars to reach it, and even if I could, a thousand more still surrounded me. Meaning all I had left was my head. Or in other words, my mind.
A mind that came to the same conclusion it did the first time: arts wouldn't save me.
Even if I could summon the surgical precision to safely untangle myself with Hand of Decay, something told me that flames wouldn't wither at my touch the same way solid objects did. Shadow Form was no better. Pockets of light shone through the twisting field, splitting the darkness underneath in a way that ensured no shadow was wide enough to carry mine.
"You look stressed," commented Niles. "Relax. When the fire eats your ward whole, I'll deactivate it. I won't scorch you."
I scowled past the growing wall of flame. "You won't roast me alive? How considerate!"
Sweat built at my temples as my eyes swerved around the incoming inferno. Blackened pieces fell off to reveal red-hot interiors.
Niles scowled back. "Spit all the bile you want. I'm not stooping to your level, killing and scarring."
"So you're above violence?" I almost laughed. "Then why hurl me off that cliff!? Guiltless pacifists don't turn friends into bloodstains!"
That pierced him like sharp glass. He looked aside. "I-I wasn't trying to…"
For a moment, the fire seemed to freeze. Then Niles' gaze darted back to mine.
"Shut up!" his flames surged in intensity. "What d'you know about 'guilt'!?"
I wanted to counter. Sense stopped me. To someone further away, the difference might've been subtle, easily missed. But I saw. His mood fluctuated. When it did, so had his flames. And in hindsight, this wasn't the first time it'd happened.
Searing Sword flared hotter when Niles' spirit shot through the roof, and extinguished at the opposite - both happened in earlier matches. And in that moment of hesitation, his wildfire paused. I couldn't say I knew which headspace impacted fire magic the same way I knew light and dark.
But I could take a wild guess.
Doubt. Distraction. That's the kind of thing that turns a man's boiling blood cold. I gotta snag those emotions out of him, and fast.
The next question was how. He wasn't so fragile as to crumble under a few barbed insults. No, I couldn't take potshots at his exterior. I needed to dig deep. But to do that, I needed to know him.
And there was no one here I knew better than Niles Hawthorne.
"…If I'm gonna lose this match," I spoke over the encroaching inferno, "there's something I wanna know."
He said nothing. But I had his attention.
His reason for being here? His mom? His hate for my magic? All ingredients to a wider, raw recipe - I'm sure of it. Time to throw it all together.
"Dark magic killed your mother, didn't it?" I pressed.
"H-how'd you know that?" his features sank.
"You've already given me the pieces. And that's one more answer: it did."
The flames burned brighter, lighting his face a ballistic blood-orange. "So what!? It was never some big secret that it stole her from me! Or that it offed Pa!"
Wait. His dad, too? He- urgh, don't get lose sight of your aim. Keep it up!
"That isn't all either. You're on the verge of joining the Order. But someone like you would never seek it out. Not even for the rounds you said you want."
"You think I lied about that?"
"Not a lie. But the story doesn't end there either. You don't want rounds to blow on good times - you hate the capital's too-sharp colors. No. I'd wager something terrible happened at your village. You're here to fix it."
Frustration washed over his eyes. "…I'm here to fix something? Wrong! I'm here to fix everything!"
The wildfire erupted, charring the halfway mark between him and I.
Niles's shouts rose to a fever pitch. "Good people got killed! Mother Tree rots to its core! Ma murdered Pa to save me and even if it worked, she died, and it tainted me!"
He snatched one hand with another and peeled back its glove beneath his ward. Then… he raised it to the light.
If I had breath, I don't doubt for a second it would've been stolen. That… thing? I'd hesitate to even call a hand.
Patches of human leather overstretched on rubbery, purple-black meat in the vague shape of five fingers and a palm. Small, slimy bulbs swelled and shrunk across the dark surface, veined in sickly orange blood. How could something so horribly warped and wrong be attached to someone so athletic and healthy? I couldn't take my eyes off of it. At the same time, I begged them to look away.
I… always wondered why he never took them off…
"Even you think it's disgusting…" his words took on a monotone bitterness. "Says a lot."
I tried to find verbal footing. He spoke first.
"D'you finally get it? Dark magic's a plague. Infects homes. Razes futures." He studied his blighted palm, before rolling it back under his glove. "It even passed from my parents to me. Not just pumping through my blood… but my mind, too."
"Huh? Y-you're a dark mage!?"
Words weren't needed. I saw the answer in his rare stillness. Others above probably had their own reactions. But the world quickly narrowed to just me and him.
"Then… then you're a shading hypocrite!" I branded. "All this time you acted like I was scum, when you're down in the dark with me!"
"I know!" he blurted back. "Dammit… I know. How could anyone know more about the taint of dark magic than a dark mage? Than someone who begged to learn it? Who brought its shadow to his own doorstep!?"
Flames progressed to just a few feet from my fingertips. But despite his outburst, they slowed and shrunk, giving clear view of Niles' pensive face. He wasn't even looking my way anymore. It occurred to me then: this was what I was searching for. Dark magic was his ugliest shame, greatest pain, and strongest hate, all at once.
Ever since we met, all his grinning and goofing masked the misery gnawing away inside him. He might've never even grappled with it. Not 'til now. I could double down, drive a nail into his deepest pain and destroy him without lifting a fist. His fires would fall and his walls would crumble and then I'd be the Templar.
Savvy as she was, Soleil must've seen the opportunity too. It was her brand of work. She'd want me to do it. Abyss, I wanted to do it. He was a snake and a hypocrite and deserved nothing less than ice-cold payback.
So say it. Feed his loathing and doubt. Let them grow so great they smother his wildfire and him along with it.
"Niles…" I finally uttered, "…you're an idiot."
Surprise pierced his heavy eyes, before anger sharpened them. "You piece of- you know I'm right! Dark magic destroys more lives than even the ones I know! It might be hurting people right now!"
Could I really tell him he was wrong? Not in good conscience. Dark magic made me what I was. Damned me to a "life" of undeath. I couldn't play pretend like it was secretly pure and holy.
Niles must've been surrounded by a dying home, fallen friends, dead parents, and blighted hands, all at once.
Just like I awoke in Sienna Forest without a home, or friends, or family, with a lifeless body and no memories. In a way, dark magic marked us both. Forever.
Abyss. I should be driving in the nail - stealing this match without pity. But…
"Our magic does destroy," I admitted. "Can't even begin to think of everyone it's hurt. Some victims, even here."
A couple heads turned above - in my periphery.
"But it's no blight." I stared over diminishing flames. "It's power. As good or evil as the mind that summons it. I've seen it save a village from marauders, rescue my oldest friend, give me a chance to chase my dreams… it stopped you from rotting in a cell."
Niles grimaced into the distance. The flames shrank to knee-height.
I continued. "Sure, its got history. But no history has to last forever. It can be good. Just like we can. Though that's not why I called you an idiot. You are an idiot. The smartest idiot I know. So how come you think I won't notice you lying to yourself?"
"What?" he turned wearily back to me. "D-dammit, what's happening to my fire!?"
Flames died to embers under my unblinking eyes. "You gotta know that dark magic isn't the source of your pain. But it's simple. Comforting. Easier to pin the blame on. Trust me, I know."
Stress reignited his gaze, but only weakened the fading wildfire. "Y-you don't know, Purple! You don't know how it feels to set the ball rolling on the worst day of your life!" He strained to focus. "Now - burn already!"
Nothing happened. I could almost see his brain blazing into overtime. But his passion was dead. He felt too much else to revive it.
I scanned the Briar Patch. Almost all of it had burned away - save for a thin ring of weaving wood around me. Niles' blade hung sideways in the brambles at the very edge.
It's owner refused to ever give in. At least, 'til his last cinder snuffed out. He blanched and turned aside with a face-full of shame. "…Maybe you're not wrong about dark magic. But if I can't blame it… what's left to blame but me? My blood? My parents were monsters. Murdered day-in and day-out. Pa was wicked to the core and Ma couldn't escape her past - even eighteen years after. I brought them together and got even more people killed. So… what does that mean for me?"
Our match seemed to fade entirely from his mind. "…Is that same evil in me, too? If my parents were that way, could I so easily be the same? A swindler? A murderer? A necromancer?"
The snap of a briar pulled him back to the moment.
I'd been subtly, quietly - snapping the briars within my hand's reach for minutes now, masking the noise with the rises of my own voice. It was a slow-going pain to work around the thorns. But with the vast majority of Briar Patch charred to ashes, escape was close.
So close, I didn't have to stay silent for another second.
"No one can decide that but you!" I twisted a freed arm to reach for his shortsword. For a moment - just the slightest moment - my eyes flicked up. To Karthwyn. To Soleil. "Others don't choose for us. Our past doesn't choose for us. Blood, magic, even our own doubts and fears - none of it defines who we gotta be!"
I angled his blade. One branch. Two. The third was split - a thick one that gave my arm much-needed room.
"Stop!" he shouted. "I won't let you break out!"
Frozen legs contradicted his words. I kept chopping.
"We saved those people in the Marketplace!" I cut. "Your mother didn't want to scar you, she wanted you to live!" I hacked. "And you - the whole reason you're here is to save your home! Even molded by dark magic… we don't have to be black-hearted!"
Charged emotions warred in his eyes. Weeks of pain were relived and re-examined in a flash of moments. By their end, it was done.
Burnt remains of wood crunched under my boots as I stepped out of the Briar Patch - or what little remained of it. My eyes locked onto the man who was meant to be my enemy.
"Well?" I questioned.
"…Why?" he barely held himself together. "After… what happened in the Ordeals. Everything I said. Why are you trying so hard to convince me about this?"
It was a question I even had to ask myself. Was it to win? Couldn't be. I would've gotten the same result with half the time and a quarter of the risk if I just went with my plan of tearing him down. So why was I building him up?
Was it indulgence? Would silencing the negative expectations he set for himself help silence those everyone else set for me as a dark mage? As an undead?
Or maybe I was just a skeleton with a bleeding heart? His mind must've been raked raw from guilt and loss. Maybe I had it in me to sympathize, enemy or not?
But what I think most closely aligned with reality was, like most things, some unclear mix of the two. Glamoured or not, I never stopped feeling like an outsider. Most would kill me if they knew what I was. What else could accompany an existence like that but loneliness? Amara and Oliver eased that pain, but they were gone, and I was alone again.
All I had left was Niles. Oliver was my first companion as an undead, but Niles was my first companion in this half-life as a "human". With him my undeath could be an afterthought. I could just treasure a good companion. And at the core of it… that was the simple, saccharine, childish answer to my question.
"Because… I miss being your friend."
Niles blinked. Twice. Three times. So many times it seemed like he was communicating in code. But it wasn't something so complicated. Actually, it capped off with something dead simple. Brief snickers… which exploded into full-blown doubled-over laughter.
I could almost feel myself turn red at the echoes bouncing off the arena walls. "Wh-what in the Abyss is so funny!?"
Niles lifted apologetic gloves as he bent back up. "Sorry! It's just… not what I thought you'd say." His expression eased, somewhere between amusement and melancholia. "Not what I thought you'd ever say to me again."
He looked aside, at the staff in his hand. "I've… got lots to say, myself. Lots more on my mind. Can't even pick where to start. All this time I told myself you were a devil. All this time I had my head stuck firm up my arse. You… could've died, when I shoved you. An innocent man dead by my hands. Exactly what I was scared of."
Niles threw a beleaguered hand onto his pinched face. "I've never been slick with words, mate. I'll let action talk."
He slung his hand high and let go; my staff came whirling through the air.
I caught it with my free hand. "Niles? What are you doing?"
"Don't mistake me," a new flaming passion lit his eyes ablaze. "I'm not giving up - there's too much at stake. But I can at least give you an edge. After all I've done, it's the least I could offer."
Without weapons or mana, I couldn't exactly figure what his plan was. I'm sure it straddled the line between crazy and genius. Whatever it was, he dropped his stance after he noticed I wasn't budging.
"What's the hold-up?" he questioned. "Let's get back into the thick of it."
I knit brows at the tiles. "…It was easy to brush past earlier. Emotions ran hotter than the wildfire between us. But the reason you're here to become a Templar is to help your village. Fix the damage and support your people."
He cocked his head. "Purple? You're not saying…"
"I've got my own reasons for joining the Order. Critical reasons." I clenched fists around sword and staff. "Yet I can't talk myself into thinking that one man's ambitions outweigh hundreds of-"
"Quit that talk!" he pointed skyward at Karthwyn, respectlessly -whose face contorted into crimson wrinkles more labyrinthine than Briar Patch. "No way he's gonna let you back in the Order! This is your only chance!"
My puzzled face spoke for me.
"I don't hafta know your goal to know it means the world to you. We've both bled and sweated to carve our ways here. And if I were to - somehow - lose, I'll manage a way. I always do. So stand and fight! I'd bet there's people you don't want to let down either!"
…He's right. Maybe the numbers don't equal out, but Oliver and Amara put their hopes in me. Penelle would've been crippled for nothing. Soleil wanted me to stand with her too - despite my opinion of her advice plummeting by the second.
If I stopped at the very end, I wouldn't just be letting myself down. I'd let them down too.
"…Fine," I accepted. "Your funeral."
Niles' blade soared at him like an arrow. He caught it with wide eyes.
"But I wouldn't be much of a Templar," I questioned, "if I pummeled a weak, defenseless man, would I?"
He saw my grin and returned the look. "Weak!?"
The reason I threw it back was no secret. If so much was at stake for us both, it was only right that the odds were completely evened.
Niles walked up to me, blade in hand. I crossed the tiles too. We met in the middle and he raised a fist. "Let the best man win?"
I studied his hand. Even with his glove covering it, I knew what lay underneath.
And bumped it with my own fist without hesitation. "Let him win!"
We both drove back as our match resumed, each carrying our rightful weapons.
He stabbed a thumb to the ground. "I'll tell you 'bout the view from the top, mate!"
I dragged mine across my neck. "Like I'd let you take my turf! All you'll see is stars!"
He crouched.
I poised.
Competition electrified the air around us.
Then? The final battle between sworn enemies - now sworn companions again - started anew.