The hot desert wind lifted fine particles of sand that ca to sting the skin. The air was heavy, charged with an almost palpable electricity. Olivia, motionless, nevertheless seed elsewhere, her senses stretched toward the horizon.
"I think it’s already started," she murmured with a smile.
Olivia gently brought her gaze back to Adrian, who stood a few ters away from her. Her smile widened, but her fingers chanically caressed the ornate guard of her khopesh.
"And if we started too?" she added in a calm voice.
Adrian remained frozen for a few seconds. Then a mocking rictus stretched his thin lips, revealing his perfect teeth.
"Start?" he repeated, tilting his head slightly. "What made you think, even for a single second, that you’re on my level, little sister?"
Olivia did not answer, her fingers wrapped around the handle of her curved weapon.
Reality seed to crack for the space of a blink. The sand under Olivia’s boots exploded backward, hurling thousands of grains in every direction. She had already disappeared, or rather, her body was moving at a speed the human eye could not follow.
She covered the distance separating them in a fraction of a second, her body leaning forward like a raptor diving on its prey.
Her blade described a deadly curve, perfectly calculated, aid directly at Adrian’s neck.
Cling!
Orange sparks flew.
Adrian’s straight sword had risen at the very last microsecond. The blade intercepted the khopesh with precision. The tallic shock vibrated long in their arms, traveling up to their shoulders.
Around Adrian, the air filled with a fine vapor, as if his own internal heat was coming to a boil. He exhaled slowly, and this vapor escaped from his lips. His smile widened further, the smile of a predator who had just foiled a trap.
He had seen the attack coming. In that brief instant when he had slowed the flow of ti, Olivia’s attack was no longer anything more than one offensive among others, extrely slow.
Olivia’s curved blade vibrated a few centiters from his carotid artery. A fraction of a second later, and her head would already be rolling on the burning sand. Their faces were so close they could feel the heat of each other’s breath.
"You really have a big mouth, little sister..."
Olivia locked her gaze into his. Her eyes betrayed no fear.
"Congratulations..." she purred with honeyed sweetness. "You haven’t usurped your title of faction leader, from what I see."
"And if you shut your mouth a little, you little whore born from a servant," he retorted with insulting familiarity.
Adrian spun his sword slightly, with a change in pressure, his body plunged forward and pivoted at the last mont toward her nape.
Cling!
Olivia blocked the attack at the last mont, her khopesh eting the opposing steel. The violence of the blow made her entire arm tremble, but she held firm.
In the sa fluid motion, Adrian raised his leg and sent a brutal kick toward Olivia’s stomach. She imdiately twisted her torso to the side, feeling the rush of air from the foot brushing her skin. Without losing a second, she retreated two quick steps, wanting to create distance.
Adrian’s gaze froze, losing all trace of mockery to beco one of absolute coldness. For him, ti slowed once more. Every grain of sand suspended in the air beca visible. And in this slowed world, Adrian moved.
He disappeared from her vision...
’Where is he!?’
His silhouette reford a few centiters from Olivia. He raised his sword, the tip of the blade pointed straight at her heart.
But at the last mont, Adrian’s eyes widened slightly.
With intuition, he instantly pivoted his body instinctively.
*Cling!*
His blade barely blocked another curved blade, an identical khopesh to the one he had just left, coming toward his back.
Olivia stood behind him.
She was still smiling.
Then, without waiting for his reaction, she leaped backward. The sand exploded again under her feet as she repositioned herself several ters away, recreating the distance as quickly as she had crossed it.
She had activated her power a few milliseconds after him. While he was focusing on an afterimage of her, she had circled his position to strike where he least expected it. But Adrian, despite his ardor, was not stupid. He had sensed the trap.
They both almost disappeared, their bodies propelled by successive temporal accelerations. The air vibrated with a series of incessant tallic shocks.
Cling! Cling! CLANG!
Their silhouettes materialized in bursts, here, there, farther away. The sand flew in continuous sprays. A blow aid at a head, blocked with a screech of steel. A blade sought the legs, parried with a backhand. A lightning thrust was dodged with a hip sway.
The exchange lasted only a few seconds, but the number of blows struck, parried, deflected was astronomical, defying all human logic.
Then, as abruptly as it had begun, they stopped.
A thin trickle of blood ran down Adrian’s right cheek, tracing a scarlet path on his skin. He slowly raised his hand and wiped the trickle with the back of his fingers. He then lowered his eyes to his palm, looking at the red trace.
"I think you’ve gotten a little soft," Olivia said, her falsely detached tone contrasting with the vigilance in her eyes.
For a mont, Adrian did not answer.
He began to laugh.
"Ah hahahaha..."
Olivia raised an eyebrow. Sothing had just changed.
The air around Adrian seed to grow heavier, becoming dense. An unheard-of pressure began to emanate from him, a monstrously terrifying aura that spread like a tide. Even the persistent heat of the desert seed to retreat, frozen by this presence.
Olivia’s smile remained plastered on her lips, but her eyes narrowed, losing all trace of lightness. They were now of absolute gravity.
Adrian was no longer playing.
His aura surged around him with disturbing power, almost twisting reality at its contact.
"Are you angry, big brother?" Olivia asked, her voice still calm but tinged with new caution. "Don’t be. I..."
Boom!
A brutal, blinding pain suddenly exploded in her right flank.
The shock was so violent, so unexpected, that she didn’t imdiately understand what had just happened. Her mind, accustod to analyzing every movent, every temporal variation, was blank. Her body folded under the impact, a wave of suffering radiating from her side.
She painfully turned her head.
"As a bitch you should stay in your place!"
And saw Adrian beside her.
Olivia’s eyes opened wide, the stupor finally erasing her eternal smile.
"Now I recognize you, Adrian! This will be your grave!"
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