The perfect war begins and ends in the mind.

You are the first and the last of your foes.

– Eifni Voriksson, “The Road of Spears”

*

She did not draw her gun.

The collapsable mace was cool in her hands, carbon fiber with a wooden grip and contact filaments on the ball. Tungsten ball bearings distributed the weight of the weapon for perfect balance just above the handle. The grip trigger was cleverly positioned so that a slight change of angle was all you needed to start the electric current on impact, whereas a different alignment would activate the kinetic force translator housed in the weapon’s head. Adaptable, concealable, and lethal—it suited her. And it would be sufficient for an opponent of this caliber.

The knife missed her because its wielder did not know how to cut. There was, Abby knew, no one there. But not existing wasn’t enough to prevent Eifni Organization from preparing to fight you.

Abby stepped to the side and slammed the grip of her mace to where an assailant might be if, hypothetically, one was trying to stab her. She felt the retort as the equal and opposite reaction of an impact rippled through her body. There was no one there, but that’s what the kata was for. Abby fought non-existent opponents every morning.

She swung twice—disengaging strikes, zoning off imaginary foes—stepping back each time to pivot toward the threat’s location. The fight slowed, the rhythm of the surprise attack disrupted. She could not perceive an attacker. But the rhythm remained. Now. She spoke the Challenge, the abbreviated version that had been cleared for use in deployments.

“I am a warrior of the Old Ways,” said Abby. “I give you this chance to surrender the field. There will not be another.”

Nothing answered her. Nothing had been warned.

Abby thumbed her hand amplifier to the preset for battle-pride, a nuanced mixture of eagerness, ambition, and abhorrence of cowardice. In that moment she became an etheric metaphor for unclaimed potential, the symbol of all that kept her opponent from reaching the peak of who they were. Against all but the strongest of wills, there would be no retreat except in shame, a piece of their pride forever abandoned on this field.

It was no lie, no manipulation as the hand amplifiers were normally used. She was the gate. They would go through her, or they would die.

“Impressive first shot,” said Lirian, lounging against a wall to her left. She was pretending not to be out of breath, pretending there was no bruise on her upper left stomach, but there was too much muscle tension to hide. “But you won’t stay lucky forever. Are you sure you don’t want to surrender the field?”

Abby took in her posture, her words, her tone, her face. They told a story of pride, excitement, intelligence, power.

She was competitive, much like Lilith. The battle was over, then. All that remained was painting it.

“To the death,” Abby replied, and stepped into threat range.

The opponent was gone immediately, but the battle was not, and Abby had known battle for nearly four hundred years. She closed her eyes and began fourth kata. Her favorite: elegant, smooth, versatile. A strike, a sweep, a step—she felt the air change, the absence of a blade striking for her neck—repositioned, transitioned smoothly into second kata—violent, punitive, unpredictable.

She knew the kick was coming because she’d seen it come in a thousand fights, so her mace was already swinging to meet it. She fired the kinetic trigger with an upward flick. It fired with a bass note and a thunderous crack, as it would if there had been an opponent to connect with. To the ground, then. Pattern ten, stomp kick into knee drop into falling hammer. Her kneepad broke a cobblestone and the mace blasted shrapnel into the air (her face turned aside, perfectly timed with the kinetic discharge). A less reactive opponent slain. Now imagine a faster one.

Sway to the side, duck, stand, step back. An opening in her guard inviting an underhand stab. There was no stab. She reversed the mace along her arm to twist the imagined knife out of its wielder’s grip. Another flick of the mace and the crack of the kinetic translator shattered the air again.

A vase shattered on the other side of the street. If someone had been thrown into that, they would have broken ribs, maybe an arm, on top of the damage the mace itself could inflict.

The shards of the vase scattered, too energetic to have been pushed by something with broken ribs. Physical resilience beyond mere human. Abby’s eyes were still closed. The shards had scattered closer to her. She turned her back to them, mace in salute position, counted to two, stepped to the side—the mace flicked out, electric contacts arcing, made no contact—into a feint pattern, then, eighth kata, wide sweeps and quick foot movements. Deny the ground. She transitioned seamlessly to modified ninth kata, dodging and weaving amid her own strikes and a phantom knife seeking her throat.

“We’re safe,” said Val. “Lilith is stable. You can stop stalling.”

Then strike home. Pattern twenty-seven, side parry into knee-elbow-stompkick into bash into filament contact along the side of the neck. Maximum wattage, humming, crackling, spraying sparks and ozone into the air.

Which didn’t happen. No discharge. She double-checked the weapon’s battery to be certain.

Abby waited a moment for an attack from a new angle, but there was no rhythm. The fight was over.

“Lirian is gone,” she said. “She vanished the moment I went for the kill.”

“The implications of that are concerning at best,” said Val.

“She might not have left,” said Abby, before addressing the empty street: “Lirian! Remember that you chose to run.”

Eifni had written: In war, if you cannot strike at your enemy’s life, strike at their pride. They will gladly give you their life instead.

Lirian had escaped today, but she had left her pride on this field. She would return for it.

Abby reflected on the battle, noting minor mistakes of form, recreating her footwork. She asked herself: Was it beautiful?

She remembered the dance, the rhythm, the crispness, the decisive blows.

Yes, it was beautiful.

Was it true?

She thought about the battle-pride, the kata and the patterns, the flow of the battle, leading up to a sparking mace smashing into empty air.

No, she decided. No, the story of the battle was false. It built to a killing blow, but when the killing blow landed, the enemy wasn’t there. The rest, as Lilith sometimes said, was commentary.

She had been deceived. Lirian would not be the only one looking for a rematch.