The leaves on the trees swayed from the force of our clashing blades.
Clang! Clang!
A slash came for my torso and I twisted out of the way, letting it pass close enough that I felt the air move against my side. The moment I cleared it I answered with a burst of quick thrusts, tight and fast, aimed to drill through whatever opening he left.
Arthur smirked. He tilted his rapier just slightly and his hand blurred, picking off every single thrust with the casual efficiency of someone swatting flies. Not one got through.
He pressed his foot into the earth and launched himself at me in a flash of golden light, coming in with a horizontal slash followed immediately by a vertical one, both aimed to take my arms and legs in sequence.
I was not going to let that happen.
Before the rapier could reach me I pushed my foot down and manipulated the gravitational center between us, pulling his balance just far enough off that the strikes went wide. He recovered instantly, barely a half-step out of position, but it was enough. I was already stepping back and the attack had missed.
Blue lightning rose around my body again, humming against my skin. I let it flood through my legs and blurred forward, closing the distance fast before jumping and driving my sword straight toward his heart.
"A big mistake, jumping in the air like that." Arthur said, and his speed spiked as his rapier angled toward the opening at my stomach.
I had left it there on purpose.
An instant before the blade reached me I blinked out of existence.
Swoosh.
Arthur's sword passed through nothing. His golden eyes swept left, right, upward, scanning the dark between the trees.
Swoosh.
I came in from directly below him, sword already cutting upward toward his chest.
Arthur felt it. He twisted his blade mid-air and spun the hilt across his fingers in a single fluid motion, catching my sword and redirecting the force sideways before I could drive it home.
"Not bad, my prince—"
I did not let him finish. I layered the space element on top of my mana, pushing both together, and blurred.
Gone again.
Arthur's expression tightened by a fraction. He straightened, pulled his guard in and went completely still.
He did not chase me. He just waited.
The only thing that existed in the silence was the sound of my feet moving through the dark at speed, circling, looking for the angle.
I came in from behind, sword swinging in a wide horizontal arc with the time element driving the speed behind it.
Arthur jumped and twisted his whole body into a side flip, clearing the blade with room to spare.
But I was already adjusting.
Before he could land I seized the gravity around him and tripled it, slamming the pull downward and dragging him toward the ground faster than a natural fall. At the same time I accelerated time around my sword, pushing the blade to meet him exactly where he was going to arrive.
For one moment I genuinely thought I had him.
The blade came in fast, angled for his neck, and there was nowhere obvious to go.
Arthur drove his rapier point-first into the earth mid-fall, used it like a pole and wrenched himself sideways with the momentum. My sword carved through empty air, close enough that it should not have missed but it did.
He pulled the rapier free while still moving, spun once as he came down and landed clean a few meters away, completely composed, like none of it had been close at all.
The whole sequence had taken maybe three seconds.
"Slippery bastard." I muttered.
"Language, my prince. I am your master." Arthur said, with that infuriating smile sitting comfortably on his face.
I noticed that the gravity increase had done nothing to him during any of that. He had moved through it like it was not there.
I cut it off.
"Good." Arthur said, noticing immediately. "Maintaining an ability that is not affecting your opponent is wasted mana and wasted focus. In a real fight that kind of mistake gets you killed."
I settled my stance, sword forward, and thought quickly.
I reduced the gravity on my own body instead, pulling it down just enough to keep my feet on the ground but light enough that every movement would cost less and return more. Not enough to float. Enough to feel like the ground had less claim on me than usual.
The difference was immediate. I felt almost weightless, like the air was something I could push against rather than just move through.
Blue lightning answered the feeling, crackling back to life across my arms and legs.
I went.
Arthur came to meet me.
What happened next was not an exchange of techniques. It was something rawer than that. Slash met parry, fist met palm, a kick aimed at his ribs deflected off his elbow, a feint that almost worked until it did not. We moved through the forest like two forces looking for the same point, each one trying to arrive there first.
Every time our blades connected blue and gold sparks erupted between us, lighting up the dark for a half second before the forest went black again, and then the next impact would bring the light back. Over and over, a stuttering shower of color moving between the trees. If anyone had been watching from a distance it might have looked like something beautiful.
It did not feel beautiful from inside it. It felt like trying to solve a problem that kept changing the moment I thought I understood it.
Because the longer we fought, the clearer something became.
Arthur was not trying.
Not in any meaningful sense. Every time I attacked he blocked and came back at me and I countered, whether with gravity to shift his footing, or a teleport to reposition, or the time element to accelerate a strike he had not fully committed to reading yet. But then he would counter that too, every single time, without showing any sign that any of it was costing him anything.
And he was not using a technique. Not one. No Swift Sword, no special movement, nothing with a name behind it. Just swordsmanship. Pure and stripped down, nothing wasted, nothing decorative. Every angle of his blade had a specific purpose. The small tilt downward when our swords met that sent a tremor through my grip and disrupted my follow-through. The way he would let his hold on the rapier loosen for a fraction of a second before spinning it to come from an angle I had already decided was closed.
It was flawless in the specific way that things are flawless when they have been done so many times that perfection is not an achievement but simply the default state.
His swordsmanship was not just good. It was something closer to a completed thing, like watching someone do what they were made for.
And I was running out of road.
The fight had shifted without me fully registering when. I was no longer pressing forward, looking for openings. I was defending, moving back, spending more effort holding the line than advancing on it. Arthur had not changed his pace or his pressure. He had simply kept coming and the cumulative weight of it had slowly moved the center of the fight until I was the one reacting and he was the one deciding.
My mana was burning down fast. Every affinity I had been running simultaneously, the lightning for speed, the space element for teleporting, the time element to push and slow, the gravity for repositioning, all of it pulling from the same well and the well was not deep enough for all of them at once. I could feel the floor of it coming up.
I could not cast a spell either. Not here. Arthur had not given me a single second of stillness and you could not build a magic circle while moving at this speed with someone's blade three inches from your throat. A mage needed time and space and Arthur had made sure I had neither.
That was the lesson underneath the fight, I realized. Not just the sword. This was what it looked like when a strong martial artist closed on a mage and refused to give ground. No spells. No formations. No carefully constructed strategy. Just a person in your space who was faster than your casting speed and intended to stay there.
Not being able to cast meant death.
I had known that as a concept before tonight.
Now I understood it as a fact.