>>6187504>>6187565>>6187688<span class="mu-i">Clang</span>.
A beautiful sound fills the air as you approach the gates of the <span class="mu-i">Collegia Espada</span>. The ringing of steel upon steel ought to be an ugly thing, yet the men who spar in the courtyard every day make it sound like the pretty chiming of a silver bell. It should have the ugly tones of the Street of Smithies where hammers endlessly pound pig iron into plates of good steel, yet it does not. No, the quality of the men who with grace and elegance waste no motion as they strike at one another is what makes it beautiful. A song to go with their dance.
Your gloomy demeanor brightens immediately when you catch sight of who is dancing in the sparring ring.
The pair look like a set of matched blades. Both have striking red hair and piercing red eyes. For the spar, they wear suits of black ironsilk trimmed with gold along the seams that accentuates their manly figures. Their backs share the same sigil, a dove resting in the center of a ring of brambles, an arrow in its beak and its wings raised to flutter off. What separates them and will ultimately determine the outcome of the spar is age and the wisdom it earns.
"Oh look, Mikhail!" the older man calls with a tease in his voice. The greys in his hair whisper of the extra years he's experienced. His gaze catches you for a moment. "Your biggest fan came to watch. Better not slip up trying to <span class="mu-i">impress her</span>!"
He punctuates his words with the sword art [Nine Steps Toward Heaven]. An advanced sword technique of the Ruby Lemniscate school of bladework, which functions similarly to the higher mysteries of refraction. By using his sword as a prism to refract the waves of fate, this sword art inverts cause and effect by inflicting the fate of "has been struck" upon the target. With that certainty rippling through time, reality corrects itself to adjust for the fact that the target has been struck.
It's a humble technique, one that does not pride itself on flashiness. Simple, elegant, and near impossible to counter without advanced magics or esoteric sword arts. A smile crosses your face when you see the shift in Mikhail's stance.
"You think I would, brother?" he asks. His stance is another technique of the Ruby Lemniscate, for their family pioneered that school of bladework. [Fate Sundering Stance] works like modulation rather than refraction, an effect that allows the user to slip the bonds of fate. He parries his brother's sword. "I won't-"
"Predictable," the older man declares. He moves so quickly that even your keen eye can't follow him.
Suddenly Mikhail is on his back, the stones of the arena crack beneath the weight of the blow he just took. His brother simply sheathes his weapon and says. "You went for the perfect counter instead of settling for good enough. Left yourself open to another vector of attack, to completely negate the first. And you said you weren't trying to impress anyone? Foolish little brother..."
