KRAKOOOOMMM!

The lightning came down in a violent column of white fire and swallowed Lancet whole.

A rippling shout shot straight out of him as raw electricity sizzled across his body, through his bones, around his chest, and down into the mountain stone beneath him.

For one blinding instant, the summit turned white. His hair shot upright, every muscle in his body locking so hard it felt as if the bolt had pinned his entire skeleton in place.

The world became nothing but pain, heat, and the terrible, crackling pressure of Heaven itself striking him directly.

Kestrel just stood expressionlessly and watched, until it finally stopped.

"Ugh..."

Lancet collapsed face-first onto the rock with a wet groan, smoke curling off his clothes in thin gray ribbons.

His body twitched constantly, like a fish on land clinging on to the last thread of life. With the smallest of strengths, Lancet rolled weakly to one side, one hand clawing at the stone as if the mountain had to be blamed for what had just happened.

Every breath came out rough and stunned. He couldn’t smell anything but ash and ozone. For a second he was not sure whether he had arms or merely the memory of arms.

Kestrel still looked unimpressed. With her arms folded beneath her breasts, she said, "You are being overdramatic."

Lancet dragged in a breath and glared up at her through the smoke rising off his shoulders.

"Overdramatic?" His voice cracked halfway through the word, which only made him angrier. He forced himself upright, wincing so hard his face twisted.

"My entire body was just penetrated by white-hot electricity!" he shouted with a mouth he couldn’t even feel. "You set me up to get struck by lightning!"

He tried to move his legs and immediately discovered they were still mostly interested in the concept of being legs rather than participating as such.

"Somehow I’m moving, but I can’t even feel my arms! Or my legs!" He touched his own face, his sparkly blue eyes widened with fresh alarm. "Is my head even on my neck?"

Kestrel stared at him for a beat. "You are fine."

Lancet made a disbelieving noise that was supposed to be a scoff but ended up in him coughing ash and lightning sparks.

"Why would you do that? Are you trying to get me killed?"

She tilted her head a fraction. "You seem surprised."

He gaped at her.

"Why else," Kestrel continued, "do you think I told you to find a mountain that tempts the sky to strike it with lightning?"

Lancet blinked once, then twice, his face slowly rearranging itself into offended confusion. "I thought that was a metaphor. For like... a really tall mountain." He looked back and forth between her and the charred summit, then held up both hands in disbelief. "Not that you wanted to turn me into an electric eel."

Kestrel’s expression remained infuriatingly level. "You cannot blame me for your lack of understanding."

"Yes I can. In this case, I totally can!"

Kestrel didn’t say anything.

Lancet opened his mouth to vent out even more, but he shut it again as something on the ground caught his eye. He looked down and realized the sticks, grass, and water she had arranged in a circle around him were gone.

They’d been burned away, dried out, and reduced to nothing by the heat of the lightning strike.

His eyes widened. "Wait. Was that what all those things were for?"

Kestrel’s gaze moved briefly to the circle where the ritual had been. "Those ingredients are for an old ritual used to attract lightning to a chosen surface."

Lancet looked at the scorched stone, then back at her with a growing sense of betrayal. "You could have mentioned that before the sky tried to murder me."

"The ritual only works on a surface high enough to invite the strike," she said, ignoring the complaint entirely. "The exact point must also be the center of the circle."

Lancet stared at her. "Why?"

Kestrel looked at him as though the answer should have been obvious from the beginning. "Because the lightning must enter cleanly. It is not meant to strike the mountain." Her eyes narrowed slightly. "It is meant to strike you."

Lancet stared at her in horror.

"Besides," Kestrel continued, "if I had told you, you would have never agreed to it. Or you would have been too terrified and might dodge on instinct when the lightning strikes. This was the only way."

"But why?" Lancet spread his arms in a question gesture. "What was the point of this?"

Kestrel didn’t say anything for a response. They just looked at each other as the storm continued around them.

Then Kestrel moved.

Her hand reached back and drew one of her Dragonblades in a smooth, lethal motion.

SLINNNNKKKKK

The sword came free with a flash of pale steel. The instant it left the sheath, a spectre of green snake dragon slithered from the blade, jaws open, body writhing through the air like a living extension of the strike itself.

Kestrel’s body turned with the blade, her green eyes sharpening, and the motion came for Lancet with a clean, elegant violence that made his spine go cold.

Despite how fast the attack was, for Lancet it was like the world had put in slow motion.

His eyes saw everything. The sword, the dragon spectre roaring beside it, its jaws widening with a soundless snarl.

He saw Kestrel’s expression, calm and focused, her face cut by the cold mountain light, her eyes bright with the same ruthless certainty he had written that she always carried into a duel.

Lancet could see every detail of this particular attack. The angle, the force, the energy exerted by Kestrel. At the same time, he felt something in his chest answer the threat.

His Grace lit up.

It surged through him all at once, hot and alive, racing from his heart through his channels like a bolt seeking its own path. His body moved before he had a chance to think and his hand snapped down to the Radiant Guillotine’s hilt as the Grace flowed into the channel in his arm.

The instant his fingers closed around it, Grace rushed into the blade, and his arm came up in a single, exact motion that he did not consciously choose so much as receive.

CLANG!

Steel met steel.

The impact rang through the summit like a bell struck in the middle of a storm. The dragon spectre snapped its jaws against the Guillotine’s edge, and for a terrifying second Lancet thought the force might tear his weapon out of his hand anyway.

But it held. Perfectly.

His stance was locked and his timing landed. His sword rose into the exact place it needed to be at the exact moment Kestrel’s strike arrived.

He looked at the block in stunned disbelief.

It was a perfect block.

Not lucky. Not one that was good enough.

An entirely Perfect Block!

Kestrel’s eyes met his over the crossed blades, and for a brief moment even she seemed to register the quality of the defense. Her expression sharpened by a fraction, her brows lifting almost imperceptibly before she drew her sword back with clean discipline.

Then she attacked again.

The second strike came faster.

The dragon spectre followed in a coiling blur of white and green, snapping from one line to another with impossible speed. Lancet had no time to admire the technique, only to respond.

He pivoted on the heel of his back foot, brought the Radiant Guillotine across to intercept, and felt the force of her next cut drive into his guard hard enough to jar his shoulder.

He stepped with it instead of against it, turned the momentum into a half-rotation, and answered with a slash of his own that forced Kestrel to shift her blade aside.

The mountain summit snapped with motion.

Kestrel pressed forward with a sequence of cuts so fast they looked like they had been cut out of the air itself.

Lancet met each one, first high, then low, then angled across the body with a riposte that forced her to lean back a half step.

He could feel the lightning still inside him, alive now rather than burning, moving through his Grace channels with a kind of wild intensity that made every response sharper, every movement more immediate.

It was like his body had stopped arguing with his sword and finally decided to trust it.

Kestrel’s dragon spectre lunged again, but this time Lancet stepped inside the arc instead of away from it. The Guillotine came up, struck the phantom jaw aside, and he used the opening to drive a quick slash toward her shoulder.

She turned it away without stress, but now he was coming with another attack. Lancet was fighting with a precision he had never quite managed before.

The battle became a storm of measured violence.

Kestrel cut.

Lancet blocked.

Lancet attacked.

Kestrel redirected.

Each time their swords collided sparks of green and gold flashed on the tall mountain peak.

The snake dragon spectre came down in a sweeping crescent, and Lancet answered it with a clean diagonal cut that split the force of the strike into the air around him.

His body was moving with a speed and confidence he had not possessed before the lightning.

Lancet knew that he wasn’t as strong as Kestrel. Not even close. Even using only one of her two Dragonblades, she was still a Grandmaster and he was still a boy learning how to keep his balance.

But something inside him had definitely changed. He could feel the difference in every step.

His Grace was no longer sluggish. His senses were no longer dull. The blade in his hand no longer felt like an object he was trying to control. It felt like the next thought his body was going to make.

Was it the lightning?

Whatever it was, Lancet clinged onto it hard. It became a friend, one that he never wanted to lose, because it made him a better person.

In this instant, a better swordsman.

For a few breathless exchanges, he kept up with her.

Then, astonishingly, he began to push back.