The young warrior challenging Lila was apprehensive. She could see it in his face as they bowed to each other and took their opening stances, swords extended toward one another at waist level.
So he’d noticed this much from watching her spar with others: Lila was tireless. Lila was brutal. Most warriors-in-training put a stop to their match once they’d been wounded, but not Lila. Most warriors had a healthy fear of weaponry, but Lila feared nothing. She’d stood at the edge of the Void too many times, pondering how easily she could disappear beneath its immaterial sheet, to fear being swallowed up by it. Or run through with a practice sword.
If she didn’t beat her opponents with skill, she’d beat them with ferocity.
Master Dimas, the instructor, looked down on her for coming from carpentry, but she was used to that, and it wasn’t relevant, so long as he humored her by allowing her to take lessons. The only thing that mattered was that when the student warrior raised his sword overhead to an attack position, his eyes betrayed his fear.
Lila breathed in. Centered herself. Let the sword become an extension of her body.
When he swung his sword down, she met his strike easily. She let her blade linger, teasingly, against the tip of his sword before drawing back and slashing at him from the side. He sidestepped and fell back.
They circled each other, then struck again. One lunged, and the other followed. The clang of blade meeting blade rang out again and again like a chaotic bell.
A few back-to-back overhead blows sent tremors through Lila’s arms, but she surged forward, adrenaline pumping, grinding her sword against the young warrior’s until their hilts nearly touched. There, they paused, pushing against one another and panting in each other’s faces. He shoved, and she stumbled back. She shoved, and he fell back even further. Releasing him, she struck while he remained off-balance, but he met the blow that fell right in front of his face.
She struck again, and he deflected. Again, and he lurched aside, but not before she nicked his arm.
“Come on, Braun,” Master Dimas admonished. “Going to let the carpenter wear you out? Is your body made of wood? Get moving!”
Snickers broke out in the crowd of young warriors gathered to watch the spectacle. Some teased Braun. Some egged him on. A few of the annoying ones chanted Lila’s name in jest.
“Yes, sir!” Braun shouted. Circling Lila once more, he set his jaw and lifted his sword overhead, the tip of it pointed behind him.
His shoulders were tense. He was trying too hard.
Lila breathed. The crowd of warriors fell away. Master Dimas fell away too; he sunk into the Void of Lila’s mind.
She swung at Braun, her body a hammer, chipping away at his strength. Her sword a chisel, scraping at his sword. She struck at the blade like she might slice right through it. Or break it or bend it out of shape. Or strip it clean of its shining finish. One cut, then another, then another, in rapid succession.
She didn’t pause for breath until her exhaustion hit her all at once.
Braun was still standing, though he looked as battered as she felt. She was tired now; he might stand a chance against her if he could summon the energy. But, too soon, Master Dimas declared the match finished. Lila had drawn first blood, which meant she had won. Lessons were over, and he had places to be.
Braun dropped his sword, coughing, and bent over with his hands on his knees.
Lowering her own sword, Lila met Master Dimas’s dissatisfied stare with equal rebuke until he turnedhis back.
At the entranceto the armory, Lila and Braun handed their practice swords over to the warriors-in-training that had been charged with the storage of weapons.
“Sorry about that.” She winced, gesturing to his injured arm. “I know I can be too intense sometimes.”
“No, no, you’re amazing! You’re the best in our class!” Braun assured her, bobbing his head enthusiastically. His long black hair stuck out at odd angles from the sloppy knot atop his head.
The student warrior, an aeon younger than her, had the infectious buoyancy of youth, and Lila returned his smile. Admiration was not a reaction she often received.
“Well…let me wrap that injury for you.” Lila gestured to the bloodied sleeve of his robes. She grabbed a few strips of cloth and a pot of healing salve from a wooden table that had been laden with supplies for that purpose.
Nowhere else in Heaven could angels break and bleed, but here they could. It was a necessary pain to sustain their existence. A healthy fear of being wounded meant a healthy fear of the Void, andos lucis,the substance of the swords and of the angels’ very bones, was the only substance in Heaven capable of harming an angel.
They learned all this in lessons: the Creator had always been there. He alwayswas.But Heaven had not been, and neither had the angels. In the beginning—not the Creator’s beginning, but the angels’ beginning—the Creator, weary of solitude, had carved through the nothingness a path of light that would become the boundaries of Heaven. But just as the state of the Creator never changed, neither did the state of the Void beyond His realm.
The Creator could create. He was all-powerful, save for this one weakness. Existence could not exist without extinction, or order without chaos, or light without dark. All of the Creator’s works could be slowly devoured, one by one, until He was alone in the endless Void once more, if the angels did not help to prevent it. Only the warriors’ swords kept the encroaching darkness of the Void—the threat of an endless nothingness—at bay.
“Actually, I’ve wanted to go up against you for a while,” Braun noted as Lila sat with him on a nearby wooden bench, “but I knew I would get beaten pretty badly, so…thanks for taking it easy on me.”
“Easy?” Lila chuckled. “You could have beaten me with a single, well-timed stroke. Your posture just needs a little improvement.”
“Oh, yeah.” Braun scratched his chin; he watched Lila bare his injured arm and soak up the excess blood. “Master Dimas always says that,” he mentioned, then added, “I didn’t want to be a warrior, you know.”
