Two armies faced each other upon the battlefield. The Eastern Alliance waved green and gold banners boldly proclaiming the eternal reign of the True Empire, while their proud legions of drummers beat out a rhythmic challenge.

Across the field, arrayed beyond the range of even an enhanced longbow, the Sun Army arrayed in a glorious chevron formation. A few meters back from the foremost slanting row of shield-bearers and pikemen, the Fire Marshal sat upon a fiery red chestnut horse. Above him waved the banner of the Sun King, its resplendent crimson-and-gold flame curling around the white circle of the sun, and even further above shone the splendid eye of the midday summer sky.

A scout came to the Fire Marshal’s side to report on enemy forces. Though the Eastern Army had no ranged weapons comparable to the Sun Army’s cannons, they were a formidable enemy nonetheless. Their ground and mounted troops were as numerous as those under the Fire Marshal’s own command. The scout had also found evidence of pit traps, ditches, and other artificial obstacles around key roads leading toward the nearest enemy cities.

The Fire Marshal turned to the various unit commanders arrayed at his side.

“Is there one among you who would face the enemy in single combat?”

An accomplished cavalry commander volunteered, but the Marshal shook his head slightly. The junior cavalry commander urged his horse forward, seizing the opportunity. The Marshal nodded, and the junior commander charged into the field.

“Tremble in fear at the Conqueror of Blackwood, Second Lieutenant of the Imperial Army, and Junior Commander of the Sun Cavalry,” the junior commander shouted, halting his mount at one-third of the distance between the two armies. His halberd spun through the air. “Who dares fight me?”

The name of his opponent rose from thousands of enemy throats.

From beneath the Eastern banners of green and gold, the Guardian General rode forth. He wore pure black armor, a shade darker than his horse’s charcoal coat, and his cloak was the vibrant green of a forest canopy against the dusty battlefield. A slitted visor hung down from his helmet, obscuring his face. He wielded a steel glaive that could split the air itself, and twin short swords were strapped to his belt.

The junior commander thrust his halberd forward. The Guardian flicked it aside with a wave of his hand. The Guardian’s glaive whirled in a counterattack, and smoke enveloped both champions. The junior commander’s horse abruptly reared, startled by the smokescreen, and the rider nearly fell.

A glaive sliced through smoke in a flash of blurry grey, hooking away the halberd in the junior commander’s moment of blindness. Metal screamed, and a steel helmet rolled away. Two horses galloped out from the cloud of smoke. Only the charcoal one had a rider. The tan horse bolted into the distance, never to be seen again.

The junior commander crashed to the ground twenty paces away from his weapon. He crawled toward the halberd, but the Guardian overtook him within moments.

A glaive hovered over the back of the junior commander’s neck, severing a few stray strands of hair. The defeated combatant froze, fingers digging into the ground. With his helmet gone, his terror was plain for all to see.

“Return to your masters, Conqueror of Blackwood, Second Lieutenant of the Imperial Army, and Junior Commander of the Sun Cavalry. Have them send someone capable of combat to decide this duel.”

Laughter and jeers rippled through the ranks of Eastern soldiers. The junior commander limped back to his own side, white-faced and shaken.

“Avenge me, Marshal,” the junior commander pleaded.

The Fire Marshal sent the disgraced junior commander away, troubled by the Guardian General’s quick victory. A skilled military leader would be a formidable threat to his troops, even if only in terms of morale. The Guardian was too dangerous to let live, and he had conveniently revealed his skill in the duel. It was better to simply remove the problem before the real battle began.

The Fire Marshal set an arrow to his bowstring in a heartbeat, aiming for the two-finger-wide slit in the Guardian’s visor. The bolt shot forth in a perfectly aimed streak.

A glaive spun like a steel fan, bisecting the arrow lengthwise at a mere three paces away from its target. The halves stuck in the ground on either side of his horse, still burning. The Guardian General leveled his glaive at the Fire Marshal.

“Your side proposed this duel—have you an ounce of honor? Send a worthy opponent or forfeit,” the Guardian General called in challenge. The Fire Marshal bristled at the implication.

“If it is an honorable death you seek, I shall gladly oblige.” The Fire Marshal handed the bow and arrows to an aide, taking instead a sturdy spear. As the Fire Marshal rode forth into battle, his armor shone golden from helm to greaves, his cloak waved with the rich red of the forge, and his horse had a coat of fiery chestnut. At his side hung a trusted sword that could blaze like starlight. He twirled a wooden spear with a blade of naphtha-coated steel.

The Fire Marshal collided with the Guardian General with a flash of lightning, and the very air trembled at the impact. The combatants broke apart in another moment, galloping in opposite directions with their weapons held high. Flames streamed from the Marshal’s spearhead, ignited by sparks from the clash, while the Guardian’s glaive trailed smoke.

The combatants brought their mounts about, and both horses ran in parallel as the riders jousted. The glaive was heavier and had a longer cutting edge, lending the Guardian more momentum in each blow, but the spear afforded the Marshal greater reach and maneuverability. The Marshal struck and feinted, but the Guardian seemed able to sense his every intention; each charge met its counter, and each defense was challenged with another swift attack.

As the minutes spilled forth, neither could gain the advantage. The Guardian possessed an uncanny familiarity with the Marshal’s fighting style, but equally so could the Marshal anticipate the Guardian’s strikes. As they fought with blades, the Marshal quickly realized that steel would not decide victory on this day.

The Marshal twisted in his saddle, flinging a clay grenade. The Guardian batted it aside, and it exploded in midair. Ceramic shards bounced harmlessly off golden and black armor alike. Both combatants paused for a moment. Fortunately for the Marshal, the strategically placed padding inside his helmet dampened the sound enough to preserve his hearing. The Guardian’s horse jumped back, spooked by the flash.

The Guardian threw a fist-sized bundle at the Marshal, but he cut it from the air. Heavy coils of black smoke poured from the sliced bundle, enveloping both riders. The Marshal held his breath, but his mount reared, startled by the smoke. Taking advantage of the extra height, the Marshal stabbed forth. The spear glanced off a sharp blade at the last moment, piercing the edge of the Guardian’s green cloak instead of the leather-clad gap between metal vambrace and gauntlet.

Acrid fumes drifted over the observers. Soldiers on both sides coughed and shifted in their places. In the Marshal’s army, a unit commander barked out orders to hold formation. On the field, the Guardian seized the extended spear behind the flaming blade, wrenching it forward while slashing out with his own glaive. The Marshal lost his precarious perch on his spooked chestnut horse. He grabbed the shaft of the glaive as he fell, unhorsing the Guardian as well. Both combatants tumbled to the ground, each still clutching the other’s weapon.

Without riders, the chestnut and charcoal mounts fled side-by-side.

The Guardian’s armored foot lashed out in a high arc, striking the spear at the exact point where an earlier glaive attack had scarred the wood. The shaft split at the flaw, leaving the Marshal with a wooden stick. He tossed it away and brought his free hand to the glaive’s wooden shaft, one-quarter of the length from the base of the blade. White fire shot from his gauntlet, setting the shaft ablaze with brilliant orange. The light faded a moment later, leaving charred and smoldering wood in its path.

The gauntlet’s fuel supply burned out quickly. The Marshal grabbed the juncture between shaft and blade with both hands, throwing all of his weight onto the bladed end of the glaive. The Guardian, similarly clutching the handle with all his might, wrenched it in the opposite direction. The weakened shaft snapped at the charred section, leaving the Marshal with a blade barely longer than his forearm, while the Guardian held a quarter-staff-sized stick.

The Guardian stumbled backward from the sudden lack of resistance. Shoulders drooped as the Guardian held up the handle to the slit in his helmet. The end still burned. After a moment of inspection, the Guardian tossed the damaged weapon aside, drawing a pair of short black swords from his belt. The Marshal drew his own longer sword and settled into a fighting stance, one hand on the hilt and the other halfway up the pale blade.

Steel clashed once more. Now it was the Guardian whose twin swords flew with greater speed, yet the Marshal’s weightier blows proved an even match for this newfound agility. As sparks flew, the Marshal’s blade flared with golden flame. He quickly switched to a two-handed grip of the hilt. To his surprise, the Guardian’s twin blades caught fire upon impact as well. Sky-blue wisps wreathed the dark steel, yet the Guardian only pressed the attack.

The three swords burned brightly at first, but as the duel wore on, the flames dipped and extinguished. Marshal and Guardian fought, one against two, until heat-stressed metal could take blows no more. One of the Guardian’s short swords snapped close to the hilt, leaving him with a useless handle. He dropped it to the ground, gripping the single remaining sword with both hands. The Marshal’s own sword soon cracked at the midpoint, and the duelers fought with a half-sword against a short sword. When even those yielded, victim to the stresses of heat and repeated impact, the artful duel of martial masters devolved into a formless brawl.

Armor dented beneath metal-clad fists. Plates of golden and black armor littered the ground as the leather bindings snapped from strikes of claw-tipped gauntlets. The Guardian stumbled back with deep dents across both greaves from a well-placed kick, unable to fully bend one knee due to the interlocking metal plates. On the next attack, the Marshal lost a good portion of a shoulder pauldron to enemy claws. His fist lashed out, and one lucky upward punch sent the Guardian’s helmet rolling into the distance.

The Guardian’s face looked familiar.

“Brother?” the Marshal gasped, though it could not be possible. The Guardian had gaunt features and short hair like copper ore. Moss-green eyes in a familiar face glared at the Marshal. Aside from the unnatural color of his eyes, the Guardian’s features were a perfect mirror of the Marshal’s own.

The Guardian lunged. Distracted by the familiar face, the Marshal was too slow to dodge. The Guardian tackled him around the middle, and both fighters crashed into the dust. When they stopped rolling, the Guardian had his opponent in a headlock. The Marshal thrashed like a beached fish, tearing several plates of the Guardian’s black armor from their moorings. When the Marshal broke free, he lost his own helmet to the other’s grip. He rolled into a low crouch, only to be tackled again. Both fell flat in a heap of flailing limbs.

The Guardian paused, fist hovering in the air. He had seen the other’s unmasked visage—identical in the most intrinsic of ways, though their chosen styles differed.

“A northerner? You studied the Way of the Sages, too?” Astonishment flashed across the Guardian’s face, though it bore no recognition. His grip faltered for a moment.

A segment of the Guardian’s abdominal armor hung loose, fastened to its owner by only a single strap. The Marshal seized the loose plate and kicked the vulnerable flesh underneath with all his might. A leather cord snapped under the blow, and the Guardian hit the ground three paces away. He rolled to his knees and hunched over, wheezing. The Marshal sprung backward, holding the stolen armor plate like a club.

“Peace, strange Sage,” the Guardian called, holding his gauntlet-clad hand out like a shield. The other hand was pressed across his abdomen, where several armor plates around the missing segment bore sizable dents. He raised himself to one knee and tore off a dented plate digging into his side. “We have fought for hours without victory. Suppose we call this a draw. Meet off the field, as civilized men instead of brawlers, and negotiate the terms of your retreat.”

“Very well. A temporary truce to negotiate the terms of your surrender,” the Marshal confirmed.

They shook hands to acknowledge the truth, dented gauntlet scraping against partly crushed gauntlet. Once a neutral location and time were chosen, both combatants retreated to their own sides, bloody and breathless after the long engagement. Broken weapons and shredded armor plates littered the ground in their wake.

The Marshal had lost his helmet during the duel, and his hair glowed like fire in the light of the setting sun. As he strode back toward friendly lines, it became clear to the front-line soldiers that his head was, in fact, haloed in actual flames. The soldiers glanced at one another, and awestruck whispers followed the Marshal’s progress across the field.

“Sir... your head is on fire,” a tactless junior officer said. His peers hushed him, but the Marshal still heard the comment. He tugged off one gauntlet and raised a leather-clad hand to his head. Significant heat indeed existed there.

“So it is.” The Marshal calmly patted out the flames and limped off, trailing a column of smoke. “Fall back to camp.”

Shocked stares followed him.