Page 103 of Alchemised

W HEN H ELENA RETURNED TO THE O UTPOST THE next week, the room was covered in some kind of thick drop cloth that padded the floor and bunched up around the door when she tried to push it open.

Ferron was already there, his cloak and coat stripped off, dressed down, and his shirtsleeves were rolled past the elbows. She froze.

Northerners were all so pale that they nearly glowed in the wintertime, while Helena turned sallow and sickly looking without sunlight. She missed the warm southern sun so much, sometimes her skin ached for it.

“I’m not training you for a battlefield,” Kaine said.

“The point of all this is to ensure you have the skills to get away. At this point, you should be fine around necrothralls as long as there aren’t too many, but if you run into one of the Undying, they will pursue, and you’ll be lucky if they only kill you. ”

She gave a stiff nod.

“Your reflexes are passable now, but an actual fight is different. There are no rules; it’s close and dirty.

Every second it takes you to attack or to get into position is a point against you.

Time will never be on your side. Your sole advantage is that they’ll underestimate you, but you’ll only get that advantage once. ”

Why was it that every time he uttered anything vaguely complimentary, he had to couch it with six criticisms?

“Right.”

He looked at her sidelong. “You’re hardly built for combat or particularly strong, but you can use that to your advantage.

Looking at you, no one will see you as a threat.

They’re likely to send thralls after you first, but if they see your abilities, you’ll be in real danger.

” He gave her a once-over. “I don’t particularly fancy being extensively stabbed today, so we’ll be using practice daggers. ”

He picked up a set from the table, tossing them.

Helena fumbled but caught them. They were light, about the same size and weight as her set, but wooden. She squeezed. It was strange, not having any resonance.

“Your goal is to either escape and knock on the wall three times—we’ll count that as getting away—or else contact enough to form a resonance channel. We’ll consider that a hit. You know what to do after that.”

It sounded overly simple, but it was the first time they were properly sparring. He probably wanted to start easy.

“Now, imagine you’re out in that bog you’re so partial to.

The terrain is terrible, and while you were up to your knees in mud gathering frogs or something, a few necrothralls spotted you.

Since you don’t have a combat partner to cover you, while you were dealing with them, you didn’t notice the Undying approaching.

He’s seen you’re a vivimancer, and his guard’s up, but he knows he’ll be rewarded for getting you alive.

” He stepped towards her until their bodies were touching. “What would you do now?”

Helena went for his chest, but rather than dodge or parry, the flat side of his hand struck her wrist. The blow was so sudden that her grip failed, and the wooden knife plummeted towards the floor. He caught it in midair.

Helena tried to jump back and regroup into a better defensive posi tion, but the cloths on the floor slowed her. Bad terrain. Kaine’s empty hand closed around her wrist, jerking her back.

The knife, now in his hand, sliced through the air towards her throat. She managed to block it with her second knife, but he caught the tip of the handguard, ripping it from her fingers.

It thumped to the floor.

“Five seconds and you’ve already lost both knives.” He pulled her closer until she could feel his breath on her skin.

She tried to shove at him. A resonance touch, that was all she needed. Forget the knives.

His left hand, which she’d sworn had a knife in it a split second prior, was suddenly empty, and it closed around her wrist before she could lay a finger on him. She tried to wrench herself free, but his grip was iron.

“Now I have both hands captured,” he narrated, as if she hadn’t noticed.

She threw herself backwards, trying to wrench free.

“A word of advice,” he said conversationally, not even swaying as she used all her strength and weight trying to break his grip.

“Don’t leave your wrists open. Once I have you by the wrists, I can do practically anything to you.

This is much easier for me to maintain than for you to escape from.

That rule also applies to feet. Be careful kicking above the knee.

If I get you by the ankle, you’ll be on the ground in seconds.

Most of the Undying are guild; they weigh twice what you do.

Even if you manage to kill them, you’ll be trapped.

Stomping or kneeing is much better than kicking.

Stomping uses your weight, rather than relying on your momentum.

Stomp hard and go for the ankles or the sides of the knees.

Disabling is key; dislocating the knee will take longer for them to regenerate than a stab wound.

A knee to the groin works, too.” He grinned. “Even the liches hate that.”

Helena promptly tried to knee him, but he effortlessly sidestepped.

“See? It’s dangerous to lose your arms.”

His lecture was getting annoying.

Helena stomped on his foot and kicked him in the shin.

He grunted. “Better, but if I were trying to capture you, I would have already drowned you in the marsh until you passed out. Or taken you by the neck and rammed your head into my knee. You need to fight dirty. Forget every word you’ve ever heard about honour in combat. The honour is surviving.”

He let go, and she stumbled back, winded already.

He watched her, his gaze as intent as a predator. A shiver ran down her spine.

“If you’re ever attacked, you will be outnumbered, and even if you aren’t outnumbered, you will never be as strong or resilient as the Undying.

We don’t tire. We can keep fighting for hours, and any injury you inflict, we will recover from in minutes if not seconds.

If they hurt you enough to slow you, you’re worse than dead. ”

“I know,” she said, her voice hollow.

“Do whatever you have to to get away.”

Helena nodded.

“Be devious. When your opponent is stronger than you, it’s crucial to use that against them.

They will underestimate you, and they’ll be angry if you manage to injure or evade them.

There’s risk and advantage to that. If they’re angry, they will try harder to hurt you, but they’ll also stop thinking clearly; that’ll make their attacks predictable.

In combat, there’s no difference between an angry person and a stupid one. ”

He let her pick up her knife and pulled the other from his pocket, tossing it back to her.

He attacked her again. And again. And again. Winning every time. Despite that, he was in a bizarrely good mood. She couldn’t for the life of her figure out why, because usually he treated her mistakes like they were personal insults.

All she needed to do to “win” a round was to get stable contact once. Anywhere. One touch. Or else reach a wall with a few seconds before he caught her.

Both were impossible. Kaine could disarm her without effort, ripping the knives out of her hands, tripping her, dodging her blows, and sidestepping.

Then she’d make a mistake, leave herself open for an instant, and that was all he needed.

He wasn’t armed or using his resonance. He didn’t need to.

He’d get her by one arm and twist it up behind her back or into some other helpless position, all while relentlessly crit icising her, telling her all the ways she was doing things wrong, all the advantages her incompetence gave him.

Helena grew progressively more and more enraged, which he also noticed and seemed amused by.

“You should be using your resonance,” he said as he attacked her the twentieth time, knocking her off balance by dodging a blow.

With a quick sweep of his boot, he sent her to the floor. She tried to jump back to her feet, but he caught her by the ankle, dragging her along. When she tried to stab him, he managed to catch both her wrists in one hand.

He pinned her wrists over her head, forcing her knives to fall from her fingers, and then he proceeded to sit on her hips.

“If I were Blackthorne, I’d slit you open and eat your organs while your heart was still beating,” he said, leaning over her. His weight had her wrists so firmly pinned down, she could feel the tiles beneath all the fabric on the floor. His fingers ghosted across her stomach.

A shiver ran through her gut, heat rolling through her like a wave.

“You’re terrible at hand-to-hand combat. I thought your stance-work was awful, but you’re even worse at this,” he said, but his eyes were following his fingers.

“Well, I’ve never done this before,” Helena said mutinously as she tried to wriggle free. Her heart was pounding. “I thought we’d both be fighting with weapons.”

He laughed. “Why would I need a weapon? You can’t even beat me when I’m empty-handed.”

She frowned at him. “Why are you in such a good mood?”

He quirked an eyebrow and stood, extending a hand to help her up. “Do you prefer me angry?”

She ignored the question but watched him warily. He still seemed bizarrely cheerful, despite the endless criticisms and warnings about all the ways she could be killed.

It should have come as a relief—she’d grown so used to his anger—but instead she felt on the verge of a breakdown just looking at him. She was running out of time.

Even if she could manipulate him to some degree, by taking advan tage of how contrary he was, it wouldn’t be reliable. That wouldn’t meet Ilva’s demands.

She picked up the knives. There was a throbbing pressure inside her skull. She’d barely slept since the solstice. She kept dreaming of him going mad, ripping himself apart like Basilius did but then consuming it all, eating himself endlessly like the dragon in the Ferron crest.