Suddenly it was already moving, faster than something that size had any right to move, and Hikaru barely got his arms up before the impact hit.
It didn't hit him though. It hit the market stall behind him instead, wood and cloth and something that might've been fruit all exploding outward in a mess of splinters and debris everywhere.
Hikaru scrambled back. He scrambled up too, boots finding the half-collapsed stall frame and shoving off it, getting himself higher instead of just backing away like his legs wanted to.
Tch. Fast.
He landed on what used to be a rooftop, or close enough to one, and looked down at Iuba Volvens recovering from the lunge that just took out a market stall instead of him.
Iuba Volvens didn't stay down for long. It came at him again, faster this time, mane already spinning back up, and Hikaru didn't have a plan beyond not getting hit.
He jumped. He didn't really think it through, just jumped, and the ledge gave out under his back foot the second he pushed off it.
He hit a wall on the way down. The wall gave.
Suddenly he was inside a grain silo, or what used to be one, before he put a Hikaru-shaped hole through the side of it. Grain came down around him like a sandstorm, gold and dusty and everywhere all at once, and Iuba Volvens crashed through the same hole a half second later because it wasn't about to let him get away that easy.
Grain kept pouring. It came up past his knees, then his waist, and he sank in trying to scramble back toward the hole.
This is the dumbest fight I've ever been in.
Three feet away, all twenty feet of Iuba Volvens was doing the exact same thing, thrashing around in a silo built for maybe a tenth that size. He almost laughed. He didn't, because laughing felt like a good way to get eaten, but he almost did.
He needed higher ground. Grain up to his waist wasn't higher ground, grain up to his waist was basically a trap with extra steps, so he grabbed the edge of the hole and hauled himself back out before Iuba Volvens finished thrashing free.
Outside, the silo cluster went up in a row, five or six of them, all linked together by rope bridges and walkways strung between the tops like somebody's afterthought. He didn't know if that was normal or if Rootharbor just built things weird. Didn't matter right now. Up there, he'd have room to move, and Iuba Volvens would have four legs to worry about instead of two.
He climbed. He climbed fast, faster than the ladder rungs were probably built for, and didn't look down until his boots hit the first walkway.
Below him, Iuba Volvens hauled itself free of the silo in an explosion of grain, mane already spinning back up to speed. It looked up at him. It did not look happy about the height difference.
"What, scared of ladders?" He grinned down at it, chest heaving. "Big scary conquest monster, can't even climb."
"IUBA VOLVENS REQUIRES NO LADDERS." It reared back, mane a blur now. "IUBA VOLVENS SIMPLY ARRIVES."
"Cool. Arrive faster, then. I've got places to be."
His hand twitched toward the lance at his hip. The Pulse was right there, one motion away, plant it and knock the whole thing sideways off its footing before it even got close. Easy. Clean. The kind of move he used to throw around like it cost nothing.
[■■■■■■■■■□] 90%
The number sat in the corner of his visor same as always, ticking down a notch every time he used the thing. It wasn't nothing, though. Never had been. Two hits, maybe three if he really pushed it and didn't mind feeling wrung out after, and then he was fighting on fumes for however long this thing decided to keep going. He'd done the math on that more than once since training started. He just used to ignore the number instead of reading it.
He didn't do it.
Not yet. He'd need it later more than he needed it now, and for once in his life he actually believed that instead of just telling himself he did.
Iuba Volvens's mane spun up another notch at that, faster than before, faster than it had gone the whole fight so far. Something about the arrive faster comment must have actually landed, because it stopped circling and just came at him, straight up the side of the silo like gravity was a suggestion it didn't feel like taking today.
He backed along the walkway. He kept backing. There wasn't a lot of walkway left to back along, and he knew that, and he kept doing it anyway because forward wasn't an option and down definitely wasn't either.
The mane caught the rope line holding up his side of the bridge.
It didn't slice clean through, not all the way, but it didn't need to. The rope frayed, then snapped, and the whole walkway dropped out from under his feet like the floor had just decided it was done being a floor.
He fell.
For half a second there was nothing to grab, nothing under him, just air and the ground somewhere way too far below and his stomach doing something it really didn't need to be doing right now.
He didn't reach for the lance. Old him would have, backup plan or not, but he kept his hands off it and found another way down instead.
His other hand caught the broken end of the rope, and his shoulder screamed at him for it. He swung, hard, straight into the side of the next silo over, boots hitting metal instead of open air.
He didn't get to enjoy that. The tail came in from above, stinger already glowing bright, and he barely caught it in his peripheral before it committed.
He dropped flat against the silo's curve. The stinger punched a hole in the metal an inch from where his head had been.
Nobody mentioned a tail. Great.
His hand twitched toward the lance again. He caught himself before it went further, jaw tight.
Not yet.
Iuba Volvens came around the curve of the silo after him, mane spinning full speed now, tail arched high for another strike.
He didn't run this time. He planted his boots against the metal, dropped his hip into the lance the way training had drilled into him a thousand times, and thought about the support beams instead of the creature itself.
This one he pulled.
The Pulse went out low and wide instead of straight at Iuba Volvens, catching the walkway supports strung between this silo and the next one over. Wood and rope gave out all at once, and the whole framework came down right on top of it mid-lunge.
Iuba Volvens hit the ground under a few hundred pounds of collapsed walkway, mane snarled up in splintered beams, and for one second it just stopped moving entirely.
[■■■■■■□□□□] 60%
The number ticked down in the corner of his visor. He didn't look at it long.
He didn't waste the opening. He dropped off the silo edge and came down on top of the wreckage, lance leading, driving the point in hard enough to feel it connect through the tangle of beams.
Iuba Volvens roared, mane thrashing free of the debris, but it was still half-pinned, legs tangled in support cable it hadn't shaken loose yet.
He didn't back off. He kept the pressure on, strike after strike, driving it back against the silo wall instead of giving it room to reset.
"REVOLVING FURY DOES NOT KNOW DEFEAT."
"Could've fooled me." He kept the pressure on, strike after strike. "Kinda looks like defeat from here."
It finally wrenched free, straight into the silo wall behind it, metal buckling around its shoulders, and for a second it was stuck there, snarled up in its own momentum.
That was enough.
He pulled back for the finish. One more hit and this was done.
He never got to bring it down.
Something caught the lance mid-swing, hard enough to stop it dead, and it took him a full second to register that the something was Nyxara, standing right there where she hadn't been a moment ago, one hand wrapped around the shaft like it weighed nothing at all.
When did she get here.
"That's enough." She didn't look strained holding his full swing dead in the air. "I'm not letting you finish that."
He didn't care why. What he cared about was that his arms were still locked from the follow-through, every muscle in them screaming from a strike he'd put everything behind, and she'd stopped it cold with one hand like it weighed nothing at all.
I put everything into that.
"I'm not finished with it yet." Her grip didn't loosen. "Its usefulness ends when I decide it does. Not when you do."
Iuba Volvens went still under him, mane slowing like it had been told to.
He yanked the lance back. It came free easier than it should have, like she'd barely been holding on in the first place, and that bothered him more than the block itself had.
He didn't call this one won, not with her standing right there instead of backing off, but he wasn't about to stand down either.
"Guess I'm up, then." He rolled his shoulders, shaking the sting out of his arms.
"You misunderstand the situation." She hadn't moved an inch since letting go of the lance. "This isn't an invitation."
Nothing in her gave him anything to read. No weight shift, no tell, nothing.
She drew a sword he hadn't even clocked her carrying, a long, thin blade with more reach to it than looked possible out of a sheath that size, and just like that this wasn't going to be a martial arts exchange at all.
He came at her anyway.
Steel met the lance shaft, once, twice, three times, faster than he could actually track past the fourth. He gave ground without meaning to, boots skidding backward across the walkway, parrying on reflex instead of any read he'd actually made.
He planted the lance hard against the walkway and triggered the Pulse point-blank, no distance to build up, just raw force radiating out in every direction at once.
[■■■□□□□□□□] 30%
It threw her back. Actually threw her, several feet, enough that for one second he let himself think it had worked.
She landed on her feet without so much as a stumble, already moving again before the shockwave finished dissipating, and closed the distance right back to where she'd started like the knockback had cost her nothing at all.
...Okay. That's not fair.
He found an opening, thought he did, and drove the lance forward in a full thrust.
Her blade turned it aside so clean he barely felt the impact, like the lance had just decided to go somewhere else on its own. The follow-up came before he'd finished recovering, flat of the blade catching him across the ribs hard enough to fold him half over.
He swung again anyway, wide, more force than technique behind it.
She ducked under it without hurrying, and her edge found the shaft of his lance instead of him, one clean cut through a weapon built to survive exactly that kind of hit. The grip splintered in his hands.
That shouldn't have worked.
He kept swinging with what was left of it, more stubborn than smart at this point, and every strike met steel instead of open air. Sparks came off the exchange now, both weapons moving too fast to track cleanly, a blur of gold and dark metal.
Then her blade got past his guard, flat side first, and the world tipped sideways.
He hit the walkway hard, the ruined lance skidding out of reach, and didn't get back up right away.
What.
He rolled up onto his feet before she could press it, and came at her bare-handed, no weapon left to work with, no plan beyond not standing still.
It didn't buy him anything. She was already inside his reach before his fist finished the swing, the flat of the blade catching his forearm and turning the whole strike aside.
He tried once more anyway, because that was the only thing he actually knew how to do.
It ended faster than the first three.
He shoved himself up onto one elbow after, ears ringing, and she was already standing over him again, not even breathing hard.
"Same read every time." A pause. "I expected more from you."
He didn't get up right away. His whole body felt like it belonged to someone else for a second.
Then Zaria's voice cut across the field, closer than he expected. "HIKARU!"
He turned his head. She was already running, Senna and Lyra right behind her, the last of the Husks scattered or down somewhere back the way they'd come.
Nyxara didn't move to stop any of them.
Zaria reached him first, hauling him up by the arm hard enough that his shoulder complained about it. "Can you stand?"
"...Yeah." He could. Mostly.
She didn't wait for more than that. She turned on Nyxara, stance widening, weight settling low into her hips, the kind of shift that usually meant something was about to get very loud.
"You want him?" Her voice dropped low. "You go through me first."
Fire built around her hands before she even finished the sentence, more of it than he'd ever seen her pull at once, enough heat that the air around all of them actually wavered with it.
Nyxara studied that for exactly one second.
"Iuba Volvens. We're retreating."
The mane spun down, reluctant about it, and dragged itself back from the wreckage toward her without arguing.
"MISTRESS NYXARA, YOU WERE SO CLOSE TO FINISHING HIM."
"We're retreating." She didn't raise her voice for that one either.
They pulled back together, Nyxara and the Beast and whatever was left of the Husks, retreating the way they'd come without anyone chasing them down.
Zaria didn't lower her guard until they were well out of sight. Then, finally, she let the fire die out of her hands.
She looked at the rest of them, then back toward the smoke still rising over Halgrove.
"Liaison post. Now." Her eyes lingered on Hikaru a second longer than the others. "We need to figure out what just happened."
They started moving.