An Ecstasy of Contradiction
She flew forward, hair trailing like calligrapher's ink in the silver of evening, and beneath her the hill began to implode, earth and stone folding up before the reaving force contained within that lissome frame. It began, but she was faster than colour, faster than darkness, faster than destruction, and so the bow wave of its disintegration had barely begun to manifest before their blades met.
Impact. Her eyes met his, pools of dilating red, and he felt warmth, a connection, intimacy in the kiss of the rapier like frost against his skin. It drew a shallow line of red against his cheek. Since he'd Exalted, he'd never been touched in a true battle.
Then came the force: the bone-shattering, stone-shivering force of her single attack, as if she'd drawn the entire horizon into her wake, pulling it forward to pile onto him. A river of such sheer power as he'd never felt even against Lung Feng Zao himself.
But he was not the boy who Zao had beaten, over and over, the defeats like raindrops in a hurricane, at the Imperial Naval Academy. He was the man who had emerged from them. At the last possible instant he sheared the onrushing force, splitting it open, striking it down. Behind the filigree rapier of the Lily was pure strength, the raw power to move things. But within the blade Ambition, was the power to kill them.
Her blade had grazed his cheek; its whisper-keen edge had bled him, but that was all it'd done. In return he struck now, throwing her backwards with sheer sharp-edged murdering force, and then he was upon her, and the dance turned to a different rhythm. The Lily cleaved, and the casual force of her strokes was enough to split air into vacuum, hurl thunder in terrible rippling shocks, and Ulyssian was the lightning in return. She lashed out with her iron gauntlet, a million times in the space between heartbeats, churning the air into puree - the air, and nothing else. Her two-handed overhead blow was as a behemoth's guillotine, such descending force as to execute Gods and nations, and where it struck, the earth shuddered and parted like fearful loam.
Ulyssian powered forward, and was repelled, and skated across the terrain that offered no more resistance to him than mist, hills punched through like fogbanks. For all that she'd repelled him, he'd left a dozen severing cuts across her arms and face, though no single blow that would tell.
"You are strong, Odyssial," she said, advancing once more, "Stronger than Ragmar himself. From whence comes the strength in your blade?"
"There is no honor in this sword," he answered, "only murder."
"By which you mean that practicality triumphs over all," she said, saddened. "I heard that you killed The Seeds. You would have gotten along."
"That is the nature of our world," he replied, and then their blades met again, that ludicrous headlong rush of beauty and violence that threw off Essence like peony blossoms in a storm around them.
The Lily came at him with a strike that was breathtaking in its elegance, the liminal edge of paroxysm, and he drew on all his focus, all his will, to bend the course of his blade so as to trap it. With keen and curt efficiency he performed the impossible maneuver, Ambition rotating with hum-cutting spin across its center axis, catching the unfurling flower of her strike. And then the blades slid and turned and glided and glanced against each other until he forced the filigree rapier out of her grip.
The Lily, for her part, was in mid-vault, the cutting edge of her gauntlet having graced his cheek more than one time during the exchange. She shifted, and planted her feet against the flat of Ambition's blade, catapulting off and skyward with an expanding boom that hurled Ulyssian backwards even as she twisted and caught her sword mid-flight.
"My sister was a savant," she said, rotating with twister speed to land safely on the earth, "A genius, far more cunning than I. She studied many men like you, like The Seeds. Men who believed that the obvious path was the correct one, that there was no wisdom to be had from the ancients."
Ulyssian struck in an instant, bearing down on her, his stance now claiming the high ground, his blows more numberless than rain. The Lily faltered, for the briefest of moments she withered before his assault, before repelling him with one desperate sally. Odyssial charged, and Ambition sang with slaughtering fury as it lanced forth to gore her.
The Lily stood her ground, and spoke.
"She found this: that the kings who thought as you did came to ruin. That trust is stronger than distrust, not because of its intrinsic nature, but because trust grows strength, while distrust devours itself. That love was stronger than hate, not because it is the better killer alone, but because it binds powers together rather than scheming to divide them. That a single truth can erase an eternity of lies. That a single kindness can redeem a lifetime of fury. That you cannot overcome the cruelty of this world by sinking to its level, but only by rising above!" And then her voice was as a clarion saber, and up came her blade in a defense beyond mortality, an aegis beyond any temporal power. And for the first time since he'd incarnated, the murdering song of Ambition was turned aside.
It would not be accurate to say that he had missed. In that instant her skill had simply been the greater.
"Acting in a way that cultivates strength through others," he managed to recover, "what an apt Gardener you are."
"It's not an act," she shook her head. "It's just faith. Faith in the truest laws of our ancestors, locked within our own instincts. Not just doing what feels good. Not just rationalizing what we think is right. But doing what we, in our hearts, know is right."
Death's Lawgiver indeed. The Lily sallied forth, striking with renewed purpose, and again Odyssial was driven back.
"Faith." He shook his head. "Knowing. Faith does not question. Knowing does not seek. When the choice is clear as day, when it is your honor against a thousand innocent lives, will you still refuse to bend? Or will the test overcome what you merely 'know' to be right?"
Her strength worked against her now, as he deflected and channeled her energies, engineering the reversal once more. Her grace was sublime, but almost predictable, and through the iron vise of probability he trapped her again. The fatal blow speared forth, cutting in through an oblique angle, poised to strike at her blind spot.
"Your test is false," She answered, "the world is monstrous but it is rarely so limited. I ask this of you: would you rather be the one who does bend when tested? Who is dissolute in his convictions and allows the world to alter his ideals? Answering cruelty with cruelty means only that you have accepted this Age of Sorrows. Accepted it, when we could have united against it!"
It was as impossible as a swordsman standing before a thunderhead to deflect the rain, but she made it look effortless. Again, his mortal onslaught was foiled.
But that was not to say that he had learned nothing.
The both of them now teetered on the edge of exhaustion, kept aloft by fumes and sheer will alone. Around them was ruinous devastation. She stood before him, a silhouette within a moonbeam, and in her eyes there was defiance, but also gentleness.
The Lily of the Valley, Dusk Caste. A more perfect marriage of elegance and brutality, this world had never seen. Asymmetry enhanced her where it would mar others. A gauntlet of black iron; a rapier of pale filigree. The rapier wielded like a sledgehammer; the gauntlet, like a lace glove. The gentleness of a lover, the intensity of a murderer. Abiding chivalry in word mirrored by monstrous power in deed. A perfect moonlit flower. A glorious carnage typhoon.
"You misunderstand," he said, and struck, not as an Exalt, but as a mortal. His supernal excellence exhausted, he returned to the bare basics of his combat art, tracking the pulse of his opponent's essence through her limbs, her eyes, the shifting of her stance. All his life he'd studied the Exalted, even as he'd rejected the fundamental truth behind them, the idea that mortals could do nothing. He'd studied them, in order to destroy them.
"It is not that I accept this world and its evils," He continued, darting down and forward, lunging inside her guard;
"But rather," Up now came Ambition, like a dagger of sunlight into midnight's spine;
"That I exploit them." The guard which was unbroken, he did not challenge again. Instead, he found a way around. The duel ended, and The Lily of the Valley fell.
Shortly after, Ulyssian collapsed next to her.
---
[ ] [Limit Break] Slay Her - +175,000 XP - Though you have come to an understanding of a sort, it is by no means an accord, and she is far too dangerous an opponent to let live. Exploit now your position as the one still conscious and finish this deadliest of foes. Aside from her armor, you will gain her filigree rapier and iron gauntlet as well - a powerful twinned pair of Artifacts that can be used or bestowed upon a powerful follower. It is perhaps not the perfect moment to kill her, but only a fool allows the perfect to be the enemy of the sufficient. Discharges your Limit Break.
[ ] Bid Farewell - The Lily will recover almost immediately. After she does, claim the prize of her armor and then bid her farewell, as you initially planned. Your philosophies are too different to be reconcilable, though that does not mean there is not a kernel of truth in what she says. You do not think she needs to be a dire enemy, but both of you now need time to think.
[ ] Continued Dialogue - You are beginning to wonder if this Gardener had much the same goals you did, and was experimenting to discern the empirically best methodology. If the Seeds was not dissimilar to you in character, that is too great a coincidence to be simply dismissed, though you will not rule it out at this juncture, either. Nonetheless, the Lily's position - that the wisest of men are too often those whose sight is most clouded by hubris, and thus the true necessity of hard decisions is nearly impossible to discern, making genuine intention-based ethics the best practical code - is not entirely unreasonable. It is perhaps not for you, but she is someone you could work with, on the matters of the Emerald Mountain and her small city of refugees. Her uncalculating benevolence can place a check on Odyssial's more extreme tendencies, and she is likely the only person with a hope of stopping you in Limit Break.
[ ] Write-In
AND
[ ] Spend Substantial Amounts of Willpower to Prevent Intimacy Creation
[ ] Spend Moderate Amounts of Willpower to Only Accept a Minor Intimacy of [Friendship towards The Lily]
[ ] Accept a Major Intimacy of [Friendship towards The Lily]
