Ronin Of Dreams
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An incessantly persistent percussion of pulsing pain amplified the pressure pounding in Con’s poor pate as he pushed off and away from the cool copper floor. Yet it lacked the basso back-beat of throbbing heartbeats, an aspect he was thankful for in the moment, given his heart was a turbine spooled up to maximum under the biochemical bliss of adrenaline. Though his perception still far outstripped his speed of muscular motion, faster still had been the Firebolt itself, as its psychokinetic force bridged the bare gap between himself and Darvey in practically the blink of an eye. But he must have given something away in those last moments, as the bolt had not struck true to his original aim.
Darvey had managed, by prudent perception, raw reflex, or a sage sixth sense, to shift and sway in the beginnings of a dodge to take the blow square on the front of one thigh. While potentially debilitating, it was a far cry from the incapacitating strike Connen-Nuete had desired. Further still from the absolute elimination of the threat he had needed. Even with the strike having landed, it reinforced an instinctual awareness that Darvey had consistently been out-foxing the F.E.R.R.E.T., out-conning the Con.
And that just wouldn’t do.
The information washed over currents of logic to pool within instinct, guiding those first precious moments of momentum at an angle favoring Darvey’s now injured side. Con suppressed the staccato spasms of a protesting cough from deep within his chest, even as he bit back on the flood of foully sweet metallic tastes of blood-oil coating his tongue. Rivulets escaped from between his lips, leaving iridescent slicks of his very inhuman life essence as Con grinned madly in the moment. ’He’s just like Da…’ though his father hadn’t been out for his head in their duel. Still, Darvey was pushing all his buttons, forcing the ferretine fellow to forgo frolic and fun in favor of his core strength.
Focus. He possessed neither the overwhelming might of a decades-refined mind like his father, nor the seemingly boundless depths of willpower of his elder brother. A prime potency Talo-Toecan apparently shared with their mother, at that. Rather, for Connen-Nuete, it was the ability to ably split his focus along multi-threaded motives at the same time with minimal sacrifice. That was how he had met his father’s lash and won the duel not even a fortnight prior. And that was the strength he drew upon now.
As great booms and titanic crashes echoed from the other duels of the arena, Con’s mind shifted into an even higher gear. Tendrils of telepathic strength choked down on the continued press of his own pain response, muffling it down into a dulled roar. Psionic commands ripped at the precious heat he had left, tearing it loose from static convection and breaking it free from orichalcum reserves. Pushed and motivated into a current flow, split into a greater and lesser path; the latter rising up to his shoulder to refine into a new Firebolt made more obvious than the last, replete with dancing flames. Go on, watch the shiny...
All while the former rippled out and down, threads of heat flow coiling and tightening around his right arm, descending towards his hand. Much like water and electricity, the current strengthened and spun faster as the threads met at confluences amidst the convective push, merged into a single unified mass of fuel in his palm. Held psychic-tight as naught but a haze, denied the luxury of combusting into flame; prepared to show Darvey that he was too hot to handle in a last-ditch effort of cooking the man inside out, if only he could connect.
Connen-Nuete had taken perhaps a half dozen steps before he curled his toes and halted his circling momentum to turn and close in on Darvey. His cloaked foe hadn’t fallen, and in fact had brought his stave into position to guard against the youth, but no matter. Betting it all was never an ideal move, but Con was confident it was his best bet all the same. Giving his opponent the headache of a choice: focus on Con’s body for the physical strike, address the threat of a new Firebolt, or split their focus between the two. It all came down to one precious moment.
A moment of a single, last breath.
A moment of zhen jiao, the charging step.
A moment of a Firebolt’s flickering high-line feint that could only connect and punish a dodge towards Con’s left.
A moment of twisting hips and accelerating tensions that brought his right palm up and out while his left arm continued to hang slack-dead.
A moment that dragged through the mud of an adrenaline soaked mind, lasting far too long until it seemed no more than A Moment Frozen in Time.
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