Ost laughed for a long time.
The kind of laugh a man does when he wants the sound to carry so that everyone in earshot understands who is allowed to make noise here.
"First level," he said. "First level Apprentice."
"Yes," Soren said.
"You're Callowmere's book boy. I've seen you standing in Vail's yard all day looking like a wet shirt on a line."
Ost hooked his thumbs into his belt. The purse hung off it, fat and lopsided. "And you've followed me onto the towpath."
"Yes."
"Say what you came to say, then run home."
Soren kept walking.
Loraine. Distance.
<<Loraine: Eleven paces. He is not braced. His weight is on the back foot because he thinks he has all night.>>
<<Loraine: 3rd level Apprentice Mage vs 7th level Apprentice Mage. Four levels above you. Roughly six times your output and about twice your reach.>>
<<Loraine: If the first strike does not land clean you will not get a second one and I will not pretend otherwise.>>
Understood.
"Petrin's daughter," Soren said.
Ost's laugh stopped.
It trailed off the way a laugh does when a man is deciding whether to be annoyed or entertained, and Soren watched him land on entertained, because men like Ost always landed on entertained.
"What about her?"
"How old is she?"
"Why?"
"I've been standing in that yard all day watching a man write down the wrong numbers with his hands shaking," Soren said, "and I wanted to know how young she'd have to be for that to work on him."
Seven paces.
"Nine," Ost said.
"Nine."
"You want to be careful, book boy," Ost growled
Five paces.
<<Loraine: Five. His weight has not moved. He is enjoying this.>>
<<Lilith: Soren...>>
Yeah.
<<Lilith: Do it properly.>>
Three paces.
Ost was still smiling when Soren stepped inside his reach and hit him.
...
Piercing Palm was not a punch.
Soren understood that the way he understood everything the system gave him, which was completely and without ever having practised it.
Ost's forearm came up. Of course it did. 7th level Apprentice reflexes against a first level Adept, and the block was clean, and it was exactly where it should have been.
The palm landed on the forearm.
The force went straight through it.
Crack.
Ost's own arm folded back into his chest and the sternum took the impact through it, and Soren heard two distinct sounds, one from the forearm and one from somewhere deeper.
Holy...Are refined techniques supposed to do that?
<<Lilith: Soren, focus>>
Ost went off his feet and hit the towpath on his back.
<<Loraine: Sternum and two ribs on the left. Forearm fractured. He cannot draw a full breath.>>
<<Loraine: He is also getting up.>>
He was.
Ost rolled and came up onto one knee and the expression on his face was not pain. Soren had expected pain. It was insult. A total, blank, offended disbelief.
The face of a man that just had something done to him that had never once happened to him in his life.
Ost surged up and swung with his less injured arm.
Soren got his arm up on instinct, which was the wrong instinct, because instinct was Ezra Vance's and Ezra Vance had been in one fight ever, in year nine, and lost it.
The backhand caught him across the forearm and shoulder.
Something between his skin and the blow went white and cracked like ice underfoot, and then the force arrived anyway, reduced, and threw him eight feet down the towpath into the mud.
<<REFINED TALISMAN: EXPENDED.>>
<<Loraine: That absorbed the majority. Without it your shoulder would be in the river. Get up.>>
Soren got up.
His whole left side had gone hot and stupid. Ost was coming down the path at him holding his broken arm against his chest, breathing in short flat sips, and there was nothing entertained about his face anymore.
<<Loraine: He will not survive a second strike to the same ribs. He also will not let you inside his reach twice.>>
<<Loraine: Six paces. Four. You have approximately one second to solve this.>>
Lilith.
<<Lilith: Yes?>>
Give me the jar.
<<Lilith: The what?>>
The jar. From storage. Now.
The empty Mortal grade jar dropped into his hand with the weight of a thing that had cost a Profound grade roll and had been worth nothing.
Soren threw it at Ost's face.
It was not a good throw. It did not need to be a good throw. Ost's good arm was busy holding his broken one and the other one had a jar coming at it.
He did what any person does when something is thrown at their head, which is flinch and turn to dodge.
Half a second.
Soren was already inside.
The second Piercing Palm went into the same place as the first, through the same forearm, into ribs that had already given up once.
This time the sound was wetter.
Ost sat down.
He sat down the way a drunk sits down, all at once and slightly sideways and he looked up at Soren with his mouth moving and nothing coming out of it, and attempted to shout.
Soren had known that was coming since noon and made up his mind long ago.
Chasing down Ost was partly for the ledger, partly for the little girl he kept hostage...but mainly for himself, with the memories he'd seen from the previous Soren, he would have to come to terms with things as soon as possible.
He put the Refined knife into the side of Ost's neck without hesitation, or at least that's what he convinced himself he did.
It was fast. It was not clean. Soren had never done it before and it turned out that nothing about a person prepares them for how much a body objects, and the whole time he held on with his hand shaking and his teeth together and did not let go.
Then it was over.
Soren sat down in the mud next to the body of a man he had killed, and put his head between his knees, and felt sick.
<<Loraine: ...>>
<<Lilith: Leave him.>>
<<Loraine: I was not going to say anything.>>
<<Lilith: I know. I'm saying it so he knows you weren't.>>
The river went past. The mist came up. Somewhere back in Greyfen a bell rang seven and stopped.
After a while Soren wiped his mouth on his sleeve and sat up, his gaze was colder than ever as he gazed at Ost's body.
He looked at his palms that were faintly covered in blood and clenched them.
Okay, he said. Okay. Tell me.
<<PAYOUT PENDING.>>
<<First Kill. Award: 1 Epic Ticket, 500 FP.>>
<<Defeated an opponent four levels above your true rank, unarmoured, without assistance. Odds against: substantial. Award: 1 Legendary Ticket.>>
<<FP: 1,950>>
<<Correct use of a Profound grade art on first application. Award: 1 Epic Ticket.>>
<<Improvised use of a stored item at a decisive moment. Loraine wishes it noted that the jar has now paid for itself and that she does not want to discuss it further. Award: 1 Rare Ticket.>>
<<Lilith: +40 LP.>>
<<Total: 1 Legendary, 2 Epic Ticket, 1 Rare Ticket, 500 FP, 40 LP>>
Soren looked up.
From what?
<<Lilith: The kill.>>
Lilith, that isn't your department no?.
A pause
<<Lilith: It didn't used to be.>> .
<<That's the merge. Some of what feeds her feeds me now and neither of us knows why. It's small. Forty's nothing. But it's the first time it's happened off blood.>>
Is that going to keep happening?
<<Lilith: Probably.>>
Do you want it to?
There was a long silence, which was not a thing Lilith did.
<<Lilith: ...Not particularly. No.>>
Soren stood up.
He took the purse off Ost's belt, which was heavy and full of money that had been taken out of the hands of everyone on the river road. He took the stolen Bindmaster's token off the cord around his neck.
He went through the leather coat and found a ring of four keys, one of which was too small and too new for a house.
Then he rolled Ost into the river, making sure that the blood leaking out of him pooled only on his clothes.
<<Loraine: That was practical.>>
Don't.
<<Loraine: I was complimenting you.>>
I know. Don't.