Gilded Ashes-Chapter 340: Almost Out

Raizen looked at his blades.

They were still on the ground where he’d left them, half-buried in moss, the black leather of their sheaths darkened even more by hours of contact with damp earth. He looked at them, then at Kenzo, then back at the blades.

"Can I use them?"

Kenzo shrugged, as if asked if his sparring partner could bring a pillow to a knife fight. "Anything that makes you more confident."

Raizen crouched, pulled the twin swords from the moss, and hooked them to his hips. The weight settled against his legs - familiar, grounding. His fingers found the handles without looking, and the grip felt like coming home after a long trip spent fighting with someone else’s hands.

He dropped into his stance. Low, weight centred. Blades still sheathed, hands resting on the handles.

He drew Eon for a dash.

The sensation was immediate - the pull, the gather, the compression of energy into his legs and core that preceded the spatial displacement he’d been using since Neoshima. But this time, something pushed back. Kenzo’s Suppression technique - the ambient drain that pulled Eon inward, the sponge that drank everything in its radius. Raizen felt it pressing against his gather, tugging at the edges, trying to siphon what he was building before it could build.

But it was weak. A fraction of what it had been on the battlefield, where Raizen couldn’t even feel his Eon forming before it was swallowed. Kenzo was barely running it - a trickle instead of a flood, just enough resistance to make the gather harder without making it impossible.

Raizen pushed through.

He dashed.

The world blurred and snapped back - the familiar lurch of distance folding. He came out of the dash low, already dropping, his right leg sweeping outward in a swipe aimed at Kenzo’s ankles.

Kenzo planted his hammer.

The head drove into the earth with a thud, the shaft vertical, a pillar between him and Raizen’s incoming kick. Standard response - ground the weapon, use it as a shield, let the attack spend itself against something immovable.

Raizen was already sliding. His momentum carried him forward on the damp moss, body close to the ground, leg extended, and in the fraction of a second before his shin met the hammer shaft he changed direction. His hands hit the earth and shoved sideways, redirecting his slide, and suddenly he was past Kenzo - behind him, the hammer planted in the wrong position, Kenzo’s back exposed.

Raizen didn’t waste the opening with something predictable. He planted both palms on the ground and threw his legs upward, inverting himself, his body rotating into an upside-down arc that brought his heel around toward the back of Kenzo’s head.

Kenzo’s eyes widened.

He didn’t turn. Didn’t need to. His right hand released the hammer shaft and swung backward, guided by something that existed beyond sight - instinct, experience, the accumulated muscle memory of a thousand fights where opponents had tried to get behind him and learned why that was a mistake. The open palm hit Raizen’s leg mid-arc, the impact redirecting the kick’s trajectory and sending Raizen spinning sideways through the air.

He hit the ground on his shoulder, and rolled. Then came up on his feet, the moss squelching under his boots, his hands already back on his blades.

The widened eyes had been real. Just for a moment, just for a fraction of a second, Kenzo had been surprised. The upside-down kick from behind - that wasn’t in any curriculum. That was Raizen improvising in real time, using the reinforcement in his arms to support his full weight on his palms and the reinforcement in his legs to swing a kick with enough force to matter.

It hadn’t landed, but it had surprised a Phalanx, and that was worth something.

Raizen circled. Moving laterally around Kenzo, feet quick and light on the moss, looking for an opening. Kenzo tracked him slowly with his whole body - rotating slowly on his axis, hammer recovered from the ground and resting at his side, the heavy head swaying gently with each turn.

Right side. Kenzo’s hammer was in his left hand. The right side was the longer path - any attack coming from there had to cross more distance before it reached Kenzo’s body, giving him more time to respond. But it was also the side without the hammer, which meant the only thing between Raizen and Kenzo’s ribs was one free arm.

Raizen committed.

He dashed again - burning Eon he couldn’t afford to burn, pushing through the thin resistance of Kenzo’s suppression field - and launched himself upward at the same time. The dash compressed the horizontal distance while his legs drove him vertical, and for one suspended moment he was airborne, above Kenzo, looking down at the top of the man’s head.

Kenzo raised his hammer. Slowly, almost casually, the shaft tilting upward until the heavy head was positioned directly above him like an umbrella - ready to intercept whatever was falling toward it.

Raizen kicked the hammerhead.

His right foot connected with the flat face of the iron, driving it sideways, pushing it out of alignment. The impact sent a shock through his leg that the reinforcement barely absorbed, but the hammer moved - shifted left, opening a gap above Kenzo’s right shoulder. And with his other foot, Raizen found the lower shaft of the displaced hammer and pushed off it, using Kenzo’s own weapon as a platform, launching himself downward at an angle that bypassed the guard entirely.

His arm swung out.

Open palm, aimed at the ankles - a sweeping strike from above, using the downward momentum and the reinforced muscles in his forearm to deliver something that would actually move a man Kenzo’s size.

Kenzo shifted his ankle. One step - quick, precise, just enough to pull the target out of reach. Raizen’s palm swept through empty air and hit the ground, and before his momentum could carry him past, he caught himself. Set his palm down. Locked his arm.

Standing on one hand, body inverted, he rotated.

The kick came around fast - powered by the spin and the reinforcement flooding into his hip and thigh, a sweeping arc that targeted Kenzo’s lead leg from an angle that was almost impossible to anticipate because no sane person threw kicks while standing on one hand in the mud.

Kenzo’s boot slipped. Half an inch - the moss giving way under sudden lateral force, his balance shifting for a fraction of a second. His free forearm came up and parried the kick, absorbing the impact with a grunt that was the first sound of genuine effort he’d made all session.

The kick stopped against his forearm. Raizen’s spin died. He collapsed out of the handstand and landed in a heap on the moss, breathing hard, arms burning, every reinforced muscle in his body screaming about the bill that was about to come due.

"Hm." Kenzo rubbed his forearm where the kick had landed. There was something in his expression that hadn’t been there before - not surprise this time, but something adjacent to it. A spec of espect, maybe. The quiet acknowledgment that what had just happened wasn’t nothing. "Nice one there. But you’re gonna need more than that."

Then he glanced at his wrist. A watch - brass, polished, the face ringed with tiny engraved flowers. New, Raizen hadn’t seen it on him before - Ukaian craftsmanship, bought from one of the market bridges, probably during the walk from the casino. It looked delicate and expensive against the thick wrist it was strapped to.

"Oh, and it’s getting pretty late" Kenzo said, reading the time. "Hurry up. We have to go back before Atman announces us missing."

He settled back into his stance. Easy. Patient. Waiting.

Raizen pushed himself up from the moss. His arms shook. His legs were heavy, the reinforcement reserves running thin, the warmth in his muscles reduced to a faint, guttering ember of what it had been at the start. He could feel the bottom of his Eon - the point where the well ran dry and the body had nothing left to channel.

He wiped his nose. Blood and mud smeared across his wrist.

One more. One last attack, using whatever Eon he had left.

He looked at Kenzo. At the hammer. At the stance - wide, balanced, the weight distributed perfectly, no openings. He thought about everything he’d learned in the last three hours. The reinforcement. The timing. The way his body moved when it stopped thinking and started reacting.

He thought about the dash. About the spatial displacement - the technique Kori had identified as something he shouldn’t have yet, something he was "early" for. The fold in distance that his body could create when it pushed hard enough.

What if he just... Pushed harder?

Raizen dropped into his stance. His hands found his blades. The handles were warm from the heat of his palms, the grip worn smooth from months of use. He drew them - both at once, the twin edges clearing their sheaths with a whisper of dark metal and luminite hum.

He closed his eyes and exhaled, fully focusing.

The last of his Eon gathered. Thin, flickering, barely enough to hold. He pushed it into his legs, his core, his arms, his blades - everywhere at once, spread thin, the final embers of a fire that was almost out.

His eyes snapped open.