I raised myself higher, twisted around to get some momentum, and empowered my muscles with another fierce burst of Physical Augmentation. Tymo's hand flickered out and caught the hammer before I could smash it into his skull. He wore an almost regretful expression before he swung me around and smashed me into the mountain. My breath hissed out of my lungs, and I struggled to my feet as he landed beside the small crater in a blaze of silver light.
“You’re strong, Swordslinger. Stronger than any student I’ve ever trained. Even Xilarion didn’t have your potential, nor your ability to master Augmentation so quickly.”
“So, you won’t take it personally,” I wheezed, “if I ask you to stand still?”
Tymo zipped over the slate, and I ducked under a spine-shattering punch. I jammed the head of the hammer into his knee, flipped into a one-handed cartwheel, and drove my feet into his face. Tymo staggered backward as my kick connected but shook it off as easily as breathing. I completed my cartwheel and used the extra momentum to smash the Demure Rebirth into the mountaintop. An earth-shattering Ground Strike erupted from the head of the hammer, and I powered up the attack with raw Vigor. A tidal wave of broken slate and dull stone raged across the peak, but Tymo flew up, out of range. The roar of falling stone filled the air, and the ground trembled as an avalanche rolled off the side of the mountain.
Tymo landed across from me and folded his hands behind his back again.
“Strong,” he repeated, “but lacking in finesse.”
I caught my breath and raised myself to his feet as he strolled toward me.
“You can’t beat him, not like this,” Choshi said with a wavering voice.
“Your Augmentation is not your only weapon,” Yono whispered.
She was right. I had other weapons at my disposal.
Like relentless shit-talking. It had served me well before.
Particularly when I was on the back foot in a fight.
“I want to know something,” I said. “You knew what the Orb was capable of, what it could do to your brothers. You were responsible for their fall to the demons, to the Straight Path. How can you call yourself a devotee of the Wandering Path if you willingly subjected them to corruption?”
Tymo halted his step. “They made their decision to fall, Swordslinger.”
“But you could have prevented it. All you had to do was take the Orb to Jiven yourself, if those were the terms of your oath. But you didn’t. You did exactly what every other Straight Path practitioner would. You used them like pawns.”
Tymo shook his head. “Your training was our first priority. I couldn’t separate myself from it, especially in the Hierophant’s absence. My Path dictated that.”
“You’re full of shit. You can fly faster and better than me. How hard would it have been to take the thing to Jiven and be done with it?”
“I did what I could. I sent you in search of my brothers. You halted the corruption in Danibo Forest. Gods above, you stopped Jiven ravaging the valley. I could have fought you. I could have stopped you. But I let you go because I knew it was the right thing to do.”
“You never should have let it happen in the first place,” I said. “You should have been better than Jiven. You really think some god would hold you to an oath with an oathbreaker?”
Tymo's face tightened a fraction, and he closed in on me again. I used everything I had to block his strikes, but the old master was as fast as a viper and knew everything I had at my disposal.
Another palm strike slipped through my guard, and I shattered a stone cairn before I slid to a grinding halt halfway down a slate-covered slope. Blood dripped from my back as I got up again. My balance was compromised, and I knew I’d taken too many concussive strikes to the head.
But I couldn’t give up.
“You’re pulling your punches,” I shouted out to him.
“Are you really in such a hurry to die?” Tymo replied.
He strode easily down the sloping mountainside and shook his head again. His face was a tight mask of mixed emotion. Regret, sorrow, and anger warred for their place in his gaze. I’d seen the same expression before, in Mahrai’s eyes.
“He hates what he has done,” Yono said. “Who he has become.”
“It makes no difference,” Nydarth countered. “He must die for his sins.”
“Does it gnaw at you?” I asked Tymo. “The guilt? Knowing that you’ve unleashed a psychopath onto the Seven Realms with a relic that gives him free access to the demonic plane?”
I pulled the Depthless Dream from my back and let loose a small tsunami of water. Tymo barely blinked as the tidal wave crashed into his body and evaporated into a hissing curtain of steam. He strode through it without a scratch and fixed me with a glare.
“Ah, there he is,” I taunted.
“You can’t begin to imagine what I have sacrificed for the Wandering Path,” Tymo said venomously. “What I continue to sacrifice so that its integrity remains intact.”
“You’re trying to kill one of your own students doing the right thing,” I countered, “just to satisfy your pride. Save your platitudes for someone who cares, Tymo. I’m not buying it.”
Tymo halted. “You’re too young, too raw, and far too brash to defeat someone like Jiven Wysaro.”
“Do you know anyone else who’s willing to go after him? Who isn’t tied down to protecting a province or guild?” I shot back. “I’m not perfect. But I have what it takes, and you know I do. That, or everything you taught me about the Wandering Path is bullshit, and you’re nothing more than a hypocrite.”
An astonished look crossed Tymo's face. “You really have no boundaries you will not cross, do you, Swordslinger? Impertinence aside, you don’t fear Jiven. Or me. Or anything that this plane has to offer you. There is no challenge you will not rise to.”
“I only do what needs to
