For an odd, surreal moment, the frigid wind around the mountaintop seemed to come to a complete standstill. As Sparrow held her breath and stared across the open stretch of white toward her opponent, she could have sworn that no one and nothing was capable of movement. Her chest refused to rise and fall to allow her to breathe, and no new snowflakes trailed to the ground. The silence and stillness felt to her like a portent of things to come in her very near future. As Sparrow's amber eyes remained locked upon Kestrel's piercing greens, an overwhelming feeling washed over her. It came and went in a fraction of a second, and yet, the sensation was definite in its meaning.

She had already lost before the first swing of her swords, and the stillness atop the mountaintop was death approaching.

Kestrel was the first to move, as though he too had felt it in the air. Snow began to fall once again as he charged forward, his zweihander held down at his hip with the blade angled toward the ground. Sparrow let out a battle cry as she ran to meet him, her curved swords held out to the sides in a reverse grip as she moved. When the two warriors met, Kestrel swung horizontally with what surely would have been a killing blow, even through a full aura. Sparrow dipped down with grace, the larger man's blade sliding across her own and causing a small shower of sparks as she redirected its arc. Kestrel brought his massive weapon above his head and cleaved straight down, aiming for the top of Sparrow's head.

A flicker of aura surrounded Sparrow's body and rapidly siphoned into her blades, turning the steel into a smoldering orange. She braced herself and kept her grip tight as she felt the implements drag her backward. Upon watching the zweihander crash downward and evoke a harmless plume of snow from the ground where she once stood, Sparrow released her telekinetic control over her weaponry. The ground began to tremble as a spray of snow and rock raced toward her from the wound in the earth that Kestrel had created, and Sparrow barely had time to leap sideways out of the way as she readied her weapons once again.

As the robed warrior raised his zweihander once again and swirled the blade over his head, the steel turned a pallid, sickly green. Sparrow gritted her teeth and lowered her upper body as she moved in to keep up the pressure. She struck out with a spinning flurry of blows, twirling her scimitars and attempting to overwhelm her opponent with speed. Kestrel turned some of the blows aside while clashing his blade with others. Sparrow could feel the vibration of the deflected strikes travel all the way through her arms due to the weight of the man's blade, and she knew that a single mistake would grant him an opening she couldn't afford.

Inevitably, the moment came. One of the young woman's horizontal strikes left her unbalanced, her front wide open and her other sword too far to bring back in for cover in time. Kestrel surged forward with a merciless blow to the center of her face with the pommel of his sword, knocking the woman back as her aura flashed dangerously. The following upward swing of his zweihander was blocked only by Sparrow's immediate usage of her semblance to hold the glowing viridian blade in place as she regained her footing. Kestrel merely smirked and made a derisive noise as he strained against the amber energy holding back his blade. Sparrow knew she couldn't keep it still forever, and so did he.

Neither of them expected her psychic grip to run out so quickly against the man's impressive strength.

Kestrel broke through the grip after a few seconds of struggle and spun, bringing his blade with him and keeping the momentum going as the steel turned a darker green. Sparrow watched as his movements became faster, as though the zweihander was getting lighter with each and every movement. The man had begun to swing the two-handed weapon as through it was a simple longsword as he advanced with a series of flourishes, leaving Sparrow no openings. The girl let out a noise of frustration and snapped the hilts of her blades together, forming a curved double-sided weapon as she began to circle. She knew she was running out of room as her trajectory became wider and the ring of her former comrades grew ever closer. Still, Kestrel kept up his advance, whirling his blade and moving to push her back.

"The longer this goes on, the worse off you are," the man threatened. "Soon, you won't even be able to s-"

Sparrow didn't give Kestrel time to finish as she hurled her blade straight for the man's chest. Her aura grabbed her clothing and dragged her forward through the air with a mighty tug so she could chase her weapon. She barely caught the blade in time to stop just short of Kestrel's spinning assault, and she, too, spun to duck beneath one of his wide swings. Sparrow raked her weapon across the man's thigh, cleaving a narrow, momentary slit through the man's aura. She followed up with a graceful thrust straight into the rapidly closing hole and drove her blade into Kestrel's flesh, earning a cry of pain as she forced the sword in deeper.

Again, the zwiehander came down, though it aimed for Sparrow's neck at an odd angle and approached with greater speed than the previous attempt. Sparrow struggled greatly to halt its advance as she pried her sword from Kestrel's thigh and backed off. She just barely got clear of the blade as it broke through her semblance and came down, its tip brushing against the end of her braid as she dodged to the side. Sparrow tried to press her advantage despite her exhaustion, and she moved in with a feint. As she predicted, the zweihander came back from the other direction, its blade an almost neon green as it sped through the air. Sparrow pushed to ensnare the blade with as much mental force as she could muster, only for everything to suddenly go very wrong.

While Sparrow had meant to hold the zweihander in place, she instead found herself pushing it backward. She noticed too late that Kestrel had completely let go of the blade the moment she had stopped it and moved to rush her. By the time Kestrel's shoulder impacted Sparrow's chest, she had no way to stop herself from falling backward and losing her grip upon his weapon. The man threw a vicious haymaker into Sparrow's jaw to knock her down to the snow before he reached back and grabbed for his sword in a spinning motion. Sparrow scrambled to rise from the snow and just barely made it to her feet as Kestrel came back around. The momentum built by his semblance was too much to react to, and once again, the world seemed to slow to a crawl.

Even feeling as though she was watching in slow motion as it happened, Sparrow felt powerless to stop the blade. She tried to reach out with her semblance, only to feel the horrifying emptiness of a blown aura instead. She tried to raise her weapon to mitigate some of the incoming blow, but she could only struggle slowly as though she was dragging her arm through water. She tried to mentally prepare herself for what she knew was about to happen, but deep down, she also knew that nothing could truly prepare anyone for death. In the final millisecond before the blade reached her, Sparrow closed her eyes and hoped that Salem would intervene.

She didn't.

The pain was incredible, and unlike anything Sparrow had ever felt before. She opened her eyes from the shock just in time to see her arm separate entirely from her body and soar through the air with a vermillion trail of blood gushing down into the snow behind it. The warm liquid oozing from the stump at her left shoulder immediately began to run down her side as she screamed in pain. Sparrow sank to her knees and dropped her weapon to clutch the wound. As she watched her limb fall uselessly into the snow, bile began to rise in her throat and her entire body quaked.

Kestrel glowered down at the dying woman and moved to stand before her. He sank his glowing sword into the earth and let out a visible puff of mist from his mouth. Sparrow trembled before him as she kept her eyes on the ground. Her vision began to blur as the fluffy white around her collected more and more scarlet. She could feel herself getting weaker by the second.

"Your chosen champion was not enough," Kestrel boasted as he addressed Salem. "I've watched this pathetic wretch train since she was a little girl, witch. Enough of this frivolous posturing. Face me alone, and see what the Acero family has become."

"She hasn't fallen just yet," Salem considered, her voice devoid of emotion. "Finish your duel, and perhaps I'll consider it."

Kestrel grunted in annoyance as he wrenched his sword from the ground. Sparrow could feel his eyes upon her, though she didn't bother to look up and meet them. All she could see was a rapidly blurring field of red and white as her vision faded slowly to black. The colors reminded her of something, though in her weakened state, she couldn't think of just what it was.

"Bastard daughter," Kestrel spat. "Admit your shortcomings, and I'll end your life quickly. Confess your own ineptitude, an-"

"Please," Sparrow tried. "Please…"

"You're begging?" Kestrel demanded, his tone full of disgust.

"P-please," Sparrow repeated in a weak voice. She could only hope that it carried to her intended recipient. "I'll do… anything…"

Sparrow had never expected death atop a snow-covered mountain to feel so warm… or to start as a wriggling sensation within her shoulder. The blood seeping from her wound had somehow shifted from ice cold as it reached the air to an unsettling, unnatural sensation of heat, as though her entire body was on fire. The confusing stirrings within her shoulder continued to intensify until the most curious thing happened- suddenly, Sparrow could feel her arm once again.

Or rather, an arm.

"How dare you beg?" Kestrel asked as he raised his zweihander high above his head. "You have no place in this Order- you have never had a place here, Kenna. For that insult, I w-"

Her vision was clear as she looked up in defiance. She gritted her teeth as she locked her eyes upon the man's neck. Somehow, she knew that all she had to do was push.

A torrent of sludge flew from Sparrow's oozing wound and formed a limb of inky black in midair, stretching farther than her arm ever could. Sparrow screamed in rage as she watched the grimm liquid twist and harden into a bony, pitch-black arm that extended between herself and Kestrel. For a final time, everything around her seemed to move at a crawl. For the first time, she felt nothing but satisfaction as she watched Kestrel's eyes widen in horror while white bone digits formed from the tip of her newly grown hand.

The razor-sharp claw tore straight through Kestrel's aura and into the flesh of his throat. Sparrow dug her nails in deeper as blood bubbled up from within the man's mouth, lending a gurgle to his scream. Kestrel's arms quaked with effort as he struggled to maintain the grip upon his sword, only for an orange glow to encase the weapon and rip it from his hands. The blade inverted and flew down toward the man's waist before impaling itself through his stomach and then tearing freely through his side, spilling a torrent of scarlet through his dark robes before falling uselessly into the snow.

"Y-you… have no place… anymore…" Sparrow seethed as she dug her claw in deeper. "This Order… will bow to our power, now…"

Kestrel reached up to try to grab at Sparrow's new limb only for the woman to pull him toward her as she crushed the inside of his throat. His body fell forward past Sparrow and into the ground with a heavy thump, spreading more blood down into the snow. Sparrow raised her new arm to inspect the handiwork as it retracted to a more natural length. Her nails of bone were several inches long and soaked with the fallen guardian's blood. The scarlet liquid trailed down into her blackened palm, which was attached to a long, narrow forearm comprised of two dark bones. Just above the elbow, the arm fanned out into a thicker structure until finally, the blackened grimm material fused into the flesh of her shoulder.

Sparrow spared only a single glance to the discolored, bloody limb lying in the snow before she turned back toward Salem. Though she was still shaking, she could feel nothing but an overwhelming warmth within her. Salem gave her a subtle smirk. Sparrow responded with a bow as she swept her right arm across her stomach and extended her new limb toward the temple ahead.

"…I cleared us a path. Shall we continue?"

"…let's," Salem agreed as she strode forward to step over Kestrel's corpse on her way to the temple.


Author's Note:

Wee!

-RD