Heat forced its way beneath my skin.
Then blue-white flame spilled between my fingers.
The commander stopped.
I was on one knee behind the exposed roots, my ruined right hand still clamped beneath my left arm. Fire curled around my elbow. It climbed the front of my coat and opened bright holes in the wet cloth.
I dragged in a breath.
The sweetness nearly made me gag.
Four minutes.
The drug had opened the same narrow way around Gluttony and forced to form an artificial Circle. I could feel mana rushing toward it from all nine cores.
Last time, I had let everything through.
The Titan had burned. So had the ground beneath it. I had barely been able to aim the fire, much less stop it.
Behind me, men were digging a trench. I couldn't go all out.
Not this time.
The elf lifted his right hand.
I threw myself sideways.
A wind blade cut through the root where my chest had been.
My left palm struck the ground. I aimed my right and compressed the flames, letting out a small burst.
The eruption kicked my arm upward. I stumbled away from the roots with blue flame streaming from my fingers.
The commander stepped back, avoiding the burst.
For the first time since I had charged him, I had made him retreat without a sword.
There. I can use that.
The elf's fingers moved.
I shoved my palm toward him. A ragged burst tore free.
It was nothing like his compact spells. The fire stretched between us in a jet.
He slid away on a gust.
Blue-white burst splashed across the shaped path.
He looked at the burning ground, then at my hand.
His expression had lost the small certainty it had carried.
I tried again.
This time, I held the pressure back until my palm hurt.
The fire gathered in a knot no wider than my fist. Its edges writhed between my fingers, searching for somewhere else to escape.
I pushed.
The knot burst forward.
The elf twisted out of its path. It passed close enough to strip the loose end of his coat into flame before striking the retaining wall behind him.
Stone burst outward.
The commander answered with three movements of his fingers.
I saw the first blade as a thin disturbance tightening across the air.
I ducked.
The second came lower.
I jumped backward, and the edge opened the toe of my boot.
The third was aimed at where I needed to land.
I fired into the ground between us.
Dirt and white flame erupted together. The blade passed through the burst and struck somewhere behind me.
Across the smoke, the commander moved toward my left.
I turned with him, holding my palm out.
He stopped.
You don't want to come close anymore.
Neither did I. However, I still wanted the sword.
It lay beyond him, the blade half-hidden beneath a pale branch. The hilt was dark with my blood.
I began moving toward it.
One short step, then another. The elf's eyes followed, and wind tightened around his boots.
He shifted between me and the weapon.
You saw that.
I sent another pulse toward his chest.
He leaned aside on a sudden gust.
His answering blade cut across the space in front of my face.
I jerked back.
Something warm slid over my upper lip. The edge had opened my cheek.
I spat blood and fired again.
He cut the air with two fingers. I moved before the blade finished forming and gathered fire. He watched the angle of my arm and slipped out of its path.
Neither of us stayed still.
The camp burned around us. Beyond it, rail-pistols cracked in uneven bursts.
I heard Henrik shout, then Thom calling for someone to get down.
I forced another mouthful of sweet air into my lungs.
Flame rolled backward over my wrist before tearing away in a broad sheet. It missed the elf entirely and struck the storehouse.
The commander attacked immediately.
A wind blade came high. I ducked behind the remains of the tree, and a second sliced through the trunk.
I pushed off the roots and tried to gain another few steps toward the sword.
My right boot caught on a broken branch.
The third blade struck beneath my left shoulder.
It cut through the burned coat and opened the flesh across my upper arm. The impact turned me sideways.
I nearly fell.
The commander's hand rose again.
I discharged straight at him before I had properly aimed.
He abandoned the follow-up and slid behind the retaining wall as fire tore a fresh gouge through its upper edge.
I limped away from the tree.
My left hand trembled.
The wound in that arm was shallow compared with my thigh, but every attempt to lift it pulled the edges apart.
High. Through the cover. Then where I land.
I had seen that sequence before.
He wasn't throwing blades at random.
The first made me move. The second removed whatever I hid behind. The third struck the place he had forced me to choose.
His wind-assisted movement followed it. A sideways slide while I was reacting, always opening a new angle on my injured leg.
I watched his boots.
The dust around them curled before he moved.
His right shoulder settled before the low cut.
There.
He lifted two fingers.
I stayed upright.
The first blade passed beside my head. His wrist turned, and I stepped toward him instead of away.
The second cut struck the ruined tree behind me.
His shoulder lowered.
I fired at the ground on his right.
He had already started moving that way.
The burst caught the edge of his wind and blew flame across his coat. He jerked away, breaking the smooth slide into two hurried steps.
For a moment, his right hand came up across his face.
I lunged for the sword.
Wind slammed into my chest.
I went backward before my fingers reached the hilt.
The blow drove me onto one knee.
The commander emerged around the broken wall.
A strip of his coat was burning. He pulled it free with his good hand and dropped it without looking down.
His left arm hung crookedly. Gold continued dripping from the shoulder where my pistol had struck him.
But his breathing was steady.
Mine came in tearing pulls.
The capsule couldn't replace the blood I was losing.
One hit.
The elf watched me from beyond the ruined trunk.
He no longer glanced toward the ridge. His attention stayed on my hands, my feet, the blood running into the dirt beneath me.
I let my left arm sag.
Then I shifted my weight onto the injured leg.
Pain ran from my knee to my hip. The muscle trembled. I kept just enough pressure on it to make the next movement look slow.
The commander's eyes dropped.
His right hand relaxed at his side.
Mana did not.
Through Mana Perception, I felt it draw close around his fingers. A narrow concentration, almost hidden against the larger movement of wind surrounding his body.
He took one step toward me.
Come closer.
I pulled mana toward my palms and forced my hands nearer each other. The fire between them brightened.
The elf stopped.
His gaze snapped to the light.
There was no more time to hide it.
I drove off my left foot.
At the same instant, the wind beneath his boots surged.
He came toward me.
A low, violent slide across the ground, his right arm drawing back while the air ahead of it thinned into a cutting edge.
We had both chosen the same opening.
I couldn't stop. Neither could he.
I brought my hands together.
My left palm pressed against what remained of my right. Blood made them slip. I locked my wrists instead and forced the fire into the space between them.
Flame climbed my forearms. It whipped backward past my face. The pressure beneath my ribs became so fierce that I thought something inside me would tear.
Smaller.
The light contracted until blue vanished into white.
There was no tidy sphere between my hands now. Just a point so bright that the elf beyond it became a dark outline.
I aimed at the center of his chest.
I let go.
The discharge punched my hands apart.
A narrow column of white fire crossed the remaining distance with a sound that swallowed the battle.
The elf twisted, but not enough to escape.
The blast struck high on his left side.
His wounded arm vanished into the light.
The force tore through the shoulder behind it, carrying burning cloth and flesh across the path. For one instant, I saw the pale curve of exposed bone inside the wound.
Then the heat consumed that too.
The beam continued beyond him.
His right hand completed its movement.
I saw the blade coming. The wind struck above my right elbow.
A cold line passed through muscle. It caught against the reforged bone for less than a heartbeat. Then my arm came away.
I hit the ground before I heard myself scream.
My right arm landed beside me. The ruined hand was still curled as though it expected a sword.
Blood struck the dirt in heavy pulses.
For a moment, I watched it without understanding.
Then I rolled onto the severed arm's side, trying to trap the stump against my body.
Pain filled everything.
My left hand clawed at the wound. There was nothing useful to grip. Torn cloth slid beneath my fingers, already soaked.
I shoved the heel of my hand against the stump.
The next pulse forced blood between my fingers.
I pressed until my shoulder shook.
The world narrowed around the effort.
The fire on my body guttered. It flared once along my back, then spilled into the ground in useless tongues.
I could still feel mana. But I could no longer hold it anywhere.
Across the path, the commander remained standing.
I stared at him.
His left arm was gone. So was a portion of the shoulder above it. The edge of the wound was blackened and drawn tight, seared by the same blast that had torn him open.
Smoke rose from his coat. His body leaned slightly to the right, compensating for weight that no longer existed.
His face had gone gray beneath its olive pallor.
He swayed once.
How the fuck are you still standing?
I tried to get a knee beneath me.
My leg slipped. I pressed down again.
The elf looked at the place where his arm had been.
For a few seconds, he did nothing else.
Then his gaze returned to me.
"Almost," he said. The word came thickly, shaped by an unfamiliar accent.
He swallowed.
"You… almost."
His right hand rose.
I tried to gather fire in my left.
A thin blue flame appeared between my fingers.
Taking the hand off my stump made the blood come faster.
The flame collapsed.
The commander's fingers drew together.
My breathing slowed. There simply wasn't enough strength left to drag the air in.
Soon I would have another morning.
I would remember the sequence of his attacks. The way he twisted when the light formed between my hands.
Next time, I would aim better.
I'll get another chance.
I closed my eyes.
A boot struck the ground beside my head.
I opened my eyes.
Someone had jumped between us.
For a fraction of a second, a dark shape filled my vision. An Iron Cross flashed against moving fabric.
The wind blade struck.
The figure jerked backward above me.
Warm blood hit my face.