Fading to Whispers

(9:3:3)

“That winged glorb. At this rate he’ll turn us into Petrah’s servant. Does he really have no understanding of how politics function?”

Winds watched his master gently scritch under the chin of the friendliest fluffwing as the man lounged on one of the couches in the airy living room’s conversation pit.

“Winds.” Hafest clicked his fingers, and Winds dutifully focused his full attention on the other’s intent gaze. “How likely is it that Petrah will take full advantage of lower pricing on high-quality scalelets?”

“There is no doubt.”

“And again, how likely is it that they would use them for own ends, instead of supporting the efforts to fight back the Drillers?”

He ran through his collected data on the current political climate of Petrah, who were mainly reinforcing Aphox with supplies. With Loh refusing to call for them directly, even as their larger cities now found themselves besieged, Petrah had effectively shrugged its shoulders and settled back to wait. A fact that hadn’t stopped it from demanding more trade in scalelets, claiming it wished to reinforce its own points of Light in case of emergency. “It’s highly likely they simply wish to take the opportunity to improve their constructs. I would expect to see the demand for Divinations to increase, as well, unless they devise a way to imbue their own constructs with true sapience.”

“I doubt they could manage that, no matter how many Light scalelets they procure.” Hafest waved a lazy hand. “Their little ‘ghost vessels’ are no match for a Divination.”

Privately, he agreed. What they created was little more than a Divination’s shell—a construct with a soulcore informed by experience impressors, but with no true life granted by the Light Scale. Passable for simple tasks, but not much more.

And Hafest did have a point. Seih Hestas’s push for Firemount to become more involved didn’t seem to take into account that, of their neighbours, only Aphox was truly involved on the ground, with the others making a pretence of assistance at best. “The best way to achieve what seems to be his end goal would be to send scalelets directly to Loh and bypass Petrah entirely to avoid any skimming.”

Hafest’s eyes narrowed slightly, his fingers stroking along the spine of the fluffwing. “Would it, now. Does this take into account the effects on our reputation?”

“Firemount would be viewed as more active. The larger powers would be taken off-guard by such a move, and be more wary of attempting to exploit Firemount’s resources, or in the worse case scenario come up with a way to hold us at knife-point for them.”

“It could also be viewed as inflammatory, and upset them. Such a move could signal that we don’t trust them.” Hafest sat up straighter, his gaze unwavering and unreadable. “I wonder, from where did you pull this? Or was it your own thought?”

Winds gaze silently back, still.

His master stood, letting the fluffwing run along his arm and jump to a dangling vine, wings fluttering. “Interesting. You and Domini Seih appear to have similar ideas, a compulsion influenced by the apparent short-term end of the world clouding your ability to think long-term.”

He didn’t move as Hafest strode towards and past him, until the man clicked his fingers. “Come. Let me give you a demonstration.”

Obediently, Winds turned and moved after him, not protesting. It had been his own foolishness that had led him to speak when Hafest had not requested it. If any of the other Divinations had been present, they would have burned him with their disapproval.

The two of them walked through the cooling archway between the main building and the sparring room, the vines and columns cast in shadow. As they entered the familiar space, the windows facing the evening dusk of the horizon and the shadow of the mountain stretching to the foothills, a part of his core twinged, uncertain.

“Pick up your sword,” his master commanded, his back turned, picking up his own and slipping it out of its sheath.

He did so, holding it loosely and at ease, watching as Hafest turned to face him. It wasn’t his place to question or protest.

“Now, strike me.”

He moved for a simple horizontal slash, Hafest simply swaying back to avoid it, and reset his position.

“Continue until I give the order.”

A strange request. Flowing forward, he moved through a pattern of strikes at a normal human pace, the wind whistling past the metal, his master avoiding each one merely by swaying, ducking, or stepping out of the way.

“When you have no weapon and your opponent has a sword, how should you defeat him?”

He moved for a stab, anticipating the other’s sidestep with a light flick at the end.

Hafest smiled, a hint of steel in his eyes as he was forced to take an extra step. “If your opponent is faster, stronger, and possesses a deadly weapon, how can you defeat him?”

The silvery glint of his blade flashed up, Hafest ducking, and effortlessly switched directions to loop down, the man twisting aside.

“The answer, of course, is never to engage him at all.”

Winds pressed forward as his master stepped back, forcing him to pursue in a staggered circle around the room. “That solution does not let you defeat him.”

“I never said the goal was to defeat him.” The other’s blade idly flicked up, deflecting his own to the side. “The goal is to create a permanent lock in which both parties can continue to coexist.”

“Coexistence is to work in harmony.”

“Coexistence can also mean to simply exist in the same space without one party causing the destruction of the other.”

Hafest stepped back again, and Winds stepped after him, leaving off any further attempts to strike with his opponent continuing to back away, not even trying to engage. “This is an existence in which neither wins.”

“To the contrary, it is an existence where everyone wins, eventually. For—”

Abruptly, his master reversed his momentum, pushing forward with a sudden snake-like strike.

“—wait long enough, and you’ll find an opportunity.”

He saw the flicker in Hafest’s aura a moment before the switch, the muscles in the human’s frame tensing, just slightly, the movement sudden but not unexpected. Twisting smoothly aside, he flicked his own sword up, tapping the flat of it against the other’s ribs.

The two of them came to a halt, Hafest smirking down at him, a hard edge in his eyes. “Of course, there is the risk that when you finally make your move, you still find yourself outmatched. This is why the match is better kept in suspension indefinitely. Do you see? If we upset the careful balance we have built up—the illusion that we are more than just a powerhouse for scalelet production—”

The man pressed into his space, twisting his blade up and around, the edge touching lightly against his neck. “We create our own destruction.”

Winds held his gaze steadily as Hafest gave him a brittle smile, both their blades locked only a twitch away from critical injury, balanced on a literal edge.

“The destruction of everything we’ve built, and everything we are.”