The duel was no rush between Old Jina and Abbot Gorei. It was unbeautiful. It was only natural that two forces that had lived long enough to outlive all that they had ever loved, would end up crashing on a roof top in a city of drowned ghosts.
Second Stroke: Ashen Palm gave Jina the blow of a funeral bell. The blow ought to have smashed her sternum, fallen in her lungs, plunged her at the feet like all other heretics who had been blessed by Gorei.
Jina exhaled hard. Dead Engine Guard had stiffened her body in scrap metal rigidity old wounds, metal pins of a hundred broken bones, the reinforcing of a life of not to break. The strength spread out in her like a shiver in rusted girders. Ach, ach, agony was common, and expired.
She smiled with bloody teeth. "That all, prayer-boy?"
Third Toll: Mercy Hook bobbed and turned her counter. Gorei's fingers found her wrist and folded it not breaking, but bending at an angle joints weren't meant to go. Ligaments screamed. Bones creaked.
Jina didn't scream. She gave a ratty-snorting laugh like gravel in a gearbox, and banged her forehead on his gas mask.
The already cracked lens splintered further. The head of Gorei jerked back, ritual calm broken in a stroke of heart. His perfect footwork had been deceived by the roof, Graveyard Reversal turned his follow up strike into a stumble.
Since the rooftop had been rotting away under him all along. Faultline Touch reefed through rust and concrete and old welding and undermined every point where his weight came. The executioner was standing on a ground which no longer believed him.
You fight as entropy, said Gorei, eyeing her through the broken mask. "Decay given form."
And you fight as a man who forgot he is dead. Jina spat rust colored phlegm. "News flash, sweetheart we all are. Difference is, I admit it."
There was a twitching in those eyes which were colorless. First indication of anything less than the ritual tranquility. "Admission is not absolution."
"Don't want absolution. Want you off my fucking convoy."
"Everything Breaks Eventually."
Jina started her final trick and the world around her started rotating.
Full Rust Lung condition caused her breaths to become visible exhaust, thick and corrosive. The roof moaned of some metallic weariness hastening, concrete falling away at the corners. The beads of execution of Gorei were heavier, with the iron cores clamoring to the call of entropy. His ideal Funeral Bell Breathing faltered a half-second.
Jina was on him.
Her chain hook ripped through his layered robes, through the ritual scarring beneath, and her body was against his old scars against Litany Scars, rust against ritual, a woman who had been fucked and beaten and rebuilt against a man who had burned away everything human.
"Come on, monk." His broken mask was hot against her breath. Show me what shall first be broken.
Grave Sutra Bind.
Gorei was lashed with beads circling her chain arm, iron and bone sinking in to the flesh, and pulled. Her stumbling into Pillar of Silence his spear hand, struck her with the precision of a surgical tool, at the notch of the throat. Her voice died. Lightheadedness filled her head. The world tilted.
But Dead Engine Guard, held.
She didn't fall. Her free hand reached out, took his gas mask and turned. The broken glass lens had broken through, and shattered to pieces, exposing.
Pale gray skin. The lips are skinny in an indelible ridge of faith. And faces which seemed to be very nearly thankful. As though some part of him had been waiting decades to have someone powerful enough to evoke him to some feeling.
Nari came behind him.
Pulse Breathing: Three Finger Seal hit his neck, his ribs, his wrist accurate hits at the meridian points which regulated the breath and coordination. His body failed him Gorei. His further step faltered.
The chain hook of Jina tore his shoulder. Blood dark, nearly black sprayed on the roof.
Gorei staggered.
The first occasion he had ever faltered in battle. The first occasion on which the executioner had been reduced to the status of the condemned.
Malik dragged himself up to the roof.
Bloodied. Barely standing. The Red Balcony Thread, in one shaking hand. His scars still burned a little with the working of the Ninth Scar, and each stride involved him some loss which he could not ill afford to lose.
Gorei saw him. Saw Shou's sash. Understood.
The Smiling Champion has been cleansed. He drew straight, disregarding the blood flowing down his shoulder, the disjointure of his coordination. "Good."
His squat eyes discovered those of Malik.
But heretic is not cleansed until he has accepted the lesson. You have not accepted, Bridge Hound. You believe there is strength to guard.
Forbidden Form Final Rite: Thousand Ash Absolution..
All the Litany Scars on the body of Gorei flamed up. His white ashes flared with fire, and then black, his pale gray skin turning the colour of old ash. Veins were ticking under the skin. His breath was all fog thick and choking, and full of the smell of incense and burnt flesh and plague pits.
Even the air became heavy. Sacred. Condemned.
"I will teach you." His voice was smothered no more the broken mask did his real voice pass, sweet and dry and so very earnest. Pain is the sole praying. Suffering the sole cleansing.
There were three men who met him.
Rust Lung, bleeding a dozen wounds, Old Jina still pumping exhaust, chain hook swinging slow. Her black bodysuit ripped, her scars a map of all the reason she never allowed monsters to have their way, Doctor Nari Vale. Malik Ren, who was hardly standing, the Red Balcony Thread in his hand, the Ninth Scar still throbbing in his veins.
Three survivors. There are three definitions of strength. One executioner who thought pain was all that was holy.
Jun sat up.
His eyes were still white shining, old, completely unhis. A little blood dribbled out of his nose and ears, yet he was equally calm in his face. His mouth opened.
The voice that came out wasn't his.
It was old. Dry. Bearing the burden of all the lessons struck into students who survived, as well as those who did not. The laughter of a one armed man who had died laughing, telling the scouts of Jaro, that yet the very last clean thing in the world was alive.
Too thick, kid. he is leaving his left side open to the last blow. deal him a blow in the scar-channel under his jaw. that is where he keeps his breath.
Jun collapsed.
Malik heard.
Malik moved.
The dead don't rest in the Ruined World. They just wait for the right moment to speak.