>>6103994No matter how much you’d like to ask Soralisa for more info, you feel like that can wait. Holding onto slumbering Rubida’s hand for good measure, you focus on the two figures standing before each other. Salicera shows an excited grin on her face, even as her hands clench her sword nervously. You know she is going to give her best performance.
By contrast, Master is as placid and as calm as ever. At least outwardly. The light in his grey eyes seems to pierce Salicera from side to side, like an invisible spear cleaving her in two.
Your breath hitches in your throat, waiting for them to make a move. Maybe it will be Salicera the one to attack first. Will she try your same trick by attempting to hit Master’s exposed hand? Or will she just trust in her extreme speed and agility to try and pierce through his defences in a flash? Having spent three years with Master, you know that would never work… you have seen him move quicker than thought at times. Sometimes it looks like Master’s limbs do not move under his will but are under Ansàrra’s command, bound to her Will by invisible strings.
Salicera shifts back and forth, attempting to correct her posture. You notice the tiny changes in her stance, how she leans sometimes a bit further and sometimes backs away as she trades look with Master.
Behind you, Rubida silently opens one eye, watching them.
The silence stretches, for ten, twenty heartbeats, while the rain keeps falling undisturbed and reckless.
Then Salicera sighs and sheathes her sword, bowing to Master.
“I concede.”
[cont.]
