***Tirnanog, Jeng, The Forest***

***Magnus***

I flash-stepped all the way up to my opponent, already swinging the spetum with abandon and leaving the surprised Thich no choice but to block with the twin weapons he was carrying.

Both his and my arms shuddered painfully as they were forced to withstand the raw impact of our colliding weapons.

His axes had a blade on one side and a pointy hammer on the other, with the grip providing an additional blade plus a protective metal basket. They looked like versatile close-range weapons mainly intended against people, but not very useful to battle the large monsters of this world.

Upon making contact, I tried channelling electricity through my weapon to electrocute the opponent, but either he had high resistance towards electricity, or his weapon was not conductive.

Narrowing my eyes, at the strange, whitish material I judged it to be likely some kind of metal ceramic compound similar to the iobeetle armour.

Not giving me any more time to analyse the situation, the man blurred forward and I flash-stepped out of instinct, dodging a hammer aimed at my head.

The weapon blew past my face, barely missing me by a centimetre which surprised the Thich warrior who exclaimed in surprise, “Whoa, you are fas-”

I flash-stepped again, keeping up the rapid pace of the fight with an attempt to impale my opponent through his back, but he blurred and was suddenly past the tip of my blade, his two weapons coming together from either side of my head.

He was fast!

I brought my spetum up and to the side, cutting the man's leather armour with a sideblade while I ducked and caught a glancing blow to my helmet. It was a wake-up call, reminding me not to mess around in mortal combat with people whose abilities weren't known with absolute certainty.

Discharging a continuous arc of lightning, I followed the man's movements as he blurred away. There was no way for him to be faster than the lightning discharge, but he still managed to be always ahead of the arc. I guided the discharge with magnetic fields but he seemed to anticipate where I would direct the energy next, and switching to plasma discharges brought no better results.

His supernatural speed was strange. It looked like he was merely moving impossibly fast, but contrary to bad movies, a human-sized object shouldn't be able to move at such speeds without audibly displacing the air all around us. It was reasonable to assume he was relying on a principle similar to the one Astra and I were using to trick the laws of physics, but I couldn’t detect any of the characteristic electromagnetic discharges a flash-step would cause.

So his ability was on the same level as flash-step, meaning he must have another way of tricking the laws of physics? Some kind of Alcubierre drive which allowed him to sidestep physical reality? If so, how had a human managed to come by this knowledge? Were Gaia’s supposed enemies responsible? Or had he simply mimicked the ability of an animal, added with a lifetime of experience?

I couldn’t stop the low chuckle from escaping my lips as I realized this opponent was a mystery, a challenge to be solved. Belatedly, I noticed I was slipping again, but for once this feeling of mine wasn’t something to be suppressed. Whatever others thought of the laughing maniac I seemingly became in the heat of battle, these instincts had never betrayed me so far.

So I embraced the feeling fully this time, allowing it to guide my actions.

The Thich came to a halt in front of me as I took on a defensive stance while considering his possible angles of attack.

“Calmed down enough to talk?” he asked, seemingly bored while he inspected the cut in his armour. “Do you know how much this leather costs? Everything else wears out within minutes at my speed.”

Instead of answering, I changed my stance slightly and drew a flechette from my belt, wondering whether he was fast enough to dodge a railgun projectile.

“Mad fucker, why are you laughing?” The Thich shook his head. “For a moment, I wondered whether you are worthy to be recruited into our ranks, but if this small exchange is already enough to snap your composure, you do not deserve to be a part of Tirnanog’s children. Only the strong get to join the Thich. All others have to serve or die.”

He spared a glance for the setting sun which was just touching the distant mountain ridge towards the north. “It will get dark soon, and then-”

My hand moved, sending the flechette at him with enough force to cause a small ‘boom’ with the projectile going supersonic.

He blurred out of the way, appearing next to me, his blades already descending. “I have had enough!”

Using my spetum and my armour to block, I avoided a heavy injury as we transitioned into a flawless exchange of colliding weapons, parries, near misses and dodges.

There was only so much I could do to keep up as I slowly fell back, forced to rely on my weapon’s reach and keep him at a distance. For the moment I managed, but the disparity in our abilities couldn’t be ignored. When it came to a single burst of speed, I had the upper hand with flash-step. Meanwhile, the Thich reigned supreme when it came to continuous overall speed.

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I was reminded of the duel at Hochberg, where I held the supreme advantage in speed. Unlike back then, this opponent wouldn’t be overwhelmed by brute force.

A state of affairs I found to be quite frustrating as I slowly took another step backwards.

“The weak are supposed to pave the way for the strong! This is the way of the children of Tirnanog!” The Thich exclaimed as he brought his weapon down on me, surging past the tip of my blade in a moment of inattention.

The hammerhead barely touched my breastplate. Under normal circumstances, it would have been a blow which could have ended the fight through blunt trauma.

But I flash-stepped backwards, laughing at his audacity. This fight wouldn’t be won so easily!

To keep up the banter during a fight to the death, either he didn’t take me seriously, or he was truly a blind fool. Sadly, I would have to rely on a gamble to end this.

Most of my sub-personalities agreed with this assessment.

I didn’t like gambling with my life on the line, but the laughing me, he relished the thought of what was to come. A glorious conclusion to a battle between two men, each standing up for their convictions. A clash with everything on the line.

“I love this,” I replied for the first time. “Try not to die too quickly.”

Sensing there was no more time to fool around, the Thich drew and threw a dagger at me.

In response, I raised my palm, shaping the electromagnetic fields in front of me just the way Gaia had taught us.

A miniature wormhole formed, though to call this one a wormhole was probably a little far-fetched. I didn’t have the power to create a jaunt point on a whim, but warping space just enough to bend the laws of physics was well within the power of someone who could teleport hundreds of kilometres and had a godlike entity as a physics tutor.

The dagger distorted strangely as it entered the warped space in front of my palm and then shot away sideways.

The Thich gaped at me as I cracked the knuckle of my index finger to loosen up my hand. If I wanted to pull this off, I needed to be a little more accurate than I had been up to this point.

Figuring my plan would work better with something providing a little more mass, I drew my short sword and twirled it once before I chucked the heavy lump of metal at the Thich.

It had more in common with a crowbar than a traditional sword as it sailed through the air, which was why my choice fell on it. Gilbert would be mad at me for ruining another weapon, but there was no helping it.

Made wary of my newly displayed ability, the Thich blurred away and I flash-stepped right in front of the weapon I had thrown so lazily.

Lifting my palm, I once more warped space with what should be the beginnings of a wormhole under normal circumstances. Tilting my palm slightly, I aimed at the Thich’s new position.

This time, the sword travelled no longer on a lazy arc but shot out as a deadly projectile.

“I have to admit I have no clue how your ability works,” I said quickly, not bothering to slow my speech. I figured another speedster would understand.

Flash-step, catch, eject, sonic boom, and the Thich blurred away yet again!

“But mine allows me to manipulate and bend the laws of physics just a little bit,” I continued, committing that there was a lot of understanding involved. If it weren't for Gaia, Astra and I would still be content with throwing lightning bolts, likely doomed to never understand the great gift she had given us.

Flash-step, catch, eject, sonic boom, and a vacuum sucked me after the projectile as the Thich blurred away.

This was getting old.

“Thing is if you aren’t super careful with warping space, a wormhole which doesn’t correct for the inertia of anything entering it… that is very dangerous,” I mumbled.

Flash-step, catch, eject, and the Thich blurred away as I was sucked after the weapon speeding away from me. My ears popped painfully with the sudden pressure difference.

“When you are sloppy about it, you can accidentally alter not only the trajectory and location of an object but also impart some power from the reference system it is moving in.”

Flash-step, catch, eject, and the Thich blurred away, or was he already blown away by the displaced air? I wasn't sure.

“As a planet is moving at several thousand kilometres an hour around its star, and the star may be moving at hundreds of thousands of kilometres, you can probably imagine how things can go wrong very quickly if your error range is off by a millionth of a degree. Worse, the error is cumulative as power is added to the system.”

The Thich blurred into existence to my left, his axes already aiming to behead me. “Which simply means I have to kill you before your projectile can gather enough energy to catch up to me!”

“Hahaha!” I grinned as I caught my weapon of mass destruction one final time, not even bothering to aim it at the Thich. “I fear it’s far too late for that.”

Instead of forcing the Thich to dodge once more by aiming at him, the sword shot straight into the earthy ground this time.

It left a roughly sword-shaped hole and I tensed in anticipation as I prepared myself.

My opponent’s eyes had a fraction of a moment to widen in horror as he realized what I had done, and then the ground beneath us erupted in a shower of earth, dust and debris as the sword’s kinetic energy was released through the impact.

From one moment to the next, a cloud of material denser than air surrounded us, bringing the Thich’s supernatural movements to an immediate halt as he collided with said particles. Stopped cold by the shower of shrapnel coming up from beneath us like a wave, he was easy prey.

Having been ready to abuse my spetum’s far longer reach, I stabbed out, impaling the man through his chest. The hard leather resisted for a moment but was ultimately no protection against the sharp tip of my spetum. Seeing how one small mistake could spell the end, I was certain the mobility gain of lighter armour wasn’t worth the risk.

Riding the shockwave of the explosion, we landed several dozen metres away, my spetum nailing the Thich to the ground.

To finish the matter, I kicked away the one axe he hadn’t let go of in his shock. Then I stepped on one of my spetum’s sideblades, driving it in all the way.

I wondered whether I should give it a good twist and finish him off, but when he just grabbed my weapon’s shaft and stared at me in defiance, I knew I was right. No matter how he did it, the rules of physics could only be bent, not broken. Just as Gaia had taught us. The air was gaseous enough to be tunnelled through for a certain distance, but put something non-gaseous in a speedster’s way and it was as good as running into a wall. A weakness the both of us shared.

Once I was sure he wouldn’t ‘blur’ anywhere anytime soon, especially not with a rod of steel running through his chest, I went over to the nearby axe with a skip in my step and claimed it for myself.

After a few testing swings, I turned back and knelt beside him, feeling somewhat exhausted. “You know what? I think I like this thing! Once I’ve made sure you don’t run away, I will search for the second one.”

Wincing, he coughed up blood and spat it in my face. “The strong take what they will from the weak.”

I wiped the blood from my faceplate and chuckled. “So true… so true. Sadly for you, I can’t even argue with your logic. Or rather… at least in your case, I don’t want to.”

Employing the axe’s blade, I raised it and gave it a first, good test-chop.