Aurelius hurtled through the air and landed on the elevated battlefield beside the path to the villa. Aurelius spun with the wind, taking his stance as Solomon jumped onto the platform in pursuit.

  The wind ceased as the whole area was charged with their essence. The air was riddled with flickers of faint blue that matched the sky.

  "Catch!" Aurelius yelled as he crisscrossed his hands, sending a slash at Solomon.

  Solomon put a hand up, and the essence dispersed upon contact. Aurelius had never seen that before. He'd never used slashes during sparring.

  Aurelius' smile got deeper as he realized all safeguards were off. Solomon put one hand behind his back and made a gesture. 'Give me everything you've got,' it told Aurelius.

  'Same to you,' Aurelius thought, getting low and ready to lunge.

  "Don't kill him!" Cade yelled from the side, her hands cupped on the sides of her mouth.

  "Don't worry," Aurelius responded, "I won't."

  Solomon gave a loud chortle, and Aurelius lunged at him. He split the wind and jumped. Raising his arms overhead, he materialized a giant sword and slashed down at Solomon. It missed, but Aurelius dispersed the sword before it hit the ground.

  Solomon was gone, but Aurelius already knew that he was behind him. He turned and materialized a shield in a split second. The shield burst apart as fast as it was materialized, and Aurelius was sent back.

  Aurelius skidded to a stop and put his outstretched arms together, concentrating essence in them. Solomon sidestepped, predicting a beam. He came at Aurelius from the side. Aurelius took the essence gathered at his hands and spread it into a shield. He pushed it at Solomon.

  The old man destroyed the shield but wasn't ready for the sequence of slashes that followed. They stopped him in his tracks, forcing him to jump to the side. Aurelius shot a beam and curved it across Solomon's path. Solomon went low and rushed at Aurelius.

  When he reached Aurelius, he forced his hands apart, dispersing the beam. He went for a palm strike. Aurelius put a foot back and hit Solomon's palm with his own.

  Both of them were launched back, Aurelius more than Solomon. While Aurelius was shaking his wrist in pain, Solomon engaged him again.

  Solomon's strike was fast and piercing. Aurelius jumped over him, spinning and flipping through the air. When he landed, Solomon had turned, and they were face-to-face. Aurelius blocked Solomon's follow-up strike with a shield materialized on his forearm. Then he countered by materializing a blade and stabbing at Solomon.

  Solomon dodged and materialized a blade. Aurelius dispersed his blade and shield to materialize something new, and the exchange continued in the same manner.

  Aurelius circled Solomon with acrobatics, materializing platforms for him to bounce off of and get as much leverage as possible. They materialized shields, swords, daggers, sticks. Streaks of essence enveloped them. When Solomon grabbed him, they had battles of restriction. Aurelius would've tried paralyzing Solomon if he was an idiot and somehow managed to grab instead of being grabbed.

  Solomon moved backward, pivoting quickly with flowing movements. He switched stances so often that when Aurelius started a strike, Solomon was in a different stance when it hit.

  The snow melted beneath their feet. Aurelius didn't know what kind of expression he was wearing, but he could see that Solomon was enjoying himself. The big grin on his face only grew as his eyes were large in the same way. Aurelius heard himself yell out like an idiot when he struck. Like a child getting pumped up with expectation at a game.

  It took a while for him to realize absolutely nothing was landing. Neither had hit the other. Sweat streamed down Aurelius' face, but no blood. Every attack was a challenge for the other to invent something new.

  Solomon materialized a bending blade that wrapped around Aurelius' short sword before snapping into rigid form, yanking the short sword from Aurelius' hand and putting him off balance. Then Solomon aimed the blade at his heart. Aurelius materialized gloves and clamped his hands around the blade. The gloves shattered but managed to slow the blade down enough for Aurelius to get his hands on it. Then he compressed essence inside the blade, and it burst apart in a streak.

  Solomon was taken aback. Aurelius grasped the opportunity to materialize eight spikes in the air and sent them at Solomon. His barrier activated, and the spikes shattered against it. Detached materializations tended to be fragile.

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  Having expected it, Aurelius shot forward. He flexed the joints in his hand and hit Solomon's barrier with a ball of compression. He went flying back. Aurelius didn't waste any time and gave chase. After a couple of leaping steps, though, Aurelius jumped high and gathered essence overhead. It was an ocean of blue. Aurelius made it crash down on Solomon. Solomon put a hand up, expecting something concrete, but it was all just pure essence.

  It was only after Aurelius landed in the pool of essence Solomon was in that he threw up his hands and his wrists snapped into tension. For an instant, all the essence materialized.

  In the next moment, Solomon's barrier burst to pieces. That was Aurelius' single chance, and he capitalized on it. Before the essence from the barrier had even dispersed, Aurelius kicked Solomon on the side at full force. It was like kicking a monolith, but Solomon's torso curved like any man's as he was sent over the edge of the battleground.

  Aurelius felt odd standing straight, partly because his foot ached, but also because he'd just sent the strongest man alive tumbling off his own mountain. He turned to Cade. She was as still as a corpse that had seen a ghost. He winked.

  "It seems I trained you too well." Solomon said as he floated up, no sign of injury on him, except maybe on his ego, but even that was concealed by what seemed to be pride for Aurelius. "Nobody had ever negated my shield."

  "Oh, I just—"

  "Flooded the inside and outside of my barrier with essence and shattered my barrier by applying pressure everywhere all at once," Solomon said, scoffing at Aurelius thinking he wouldn't have realized it, even though it had been just tens of seconds since the impact.

  It had taken Aurelius a month to figure out that strategy and weeks of practice to get the materialization technique right. The key was making tiny spikes like the ice he had felt in his veins so many times while plunging himself into the fjord.

  "My question is how you knew it would work," Solomon said.

  "Your barrier is a detached materialization. I figured you must've made it so that the essence gets concentrated where there is pressure."

  "Bold of you to assume that I couldn't make it impenetrable everywhere."

  Aurelius laughed. "No man is a mountain."

  ***

  After their final bout, Solomon took Aurelius to the basement.

  "Well, what is it?" Aurelius asked.

  "I want to give you something," Solomon answered, lighting the way with sparks of essence.

  Aurelius looked around the basement, thinking whether he would ever see it again. He'd spent so many nights there in solitude, eating the dried beef from the butchery that the place felt like a part of his life. A period of discovery he was leaving behind even though he still hadn't discovered the most important thing of them all.

  They came to the treasury, and Solomin lit an oil lamp before walking to the wall where all his valuables were.

  'He's going to give me one of those?' Aurelius thought.

  Solomon's hand reached for a golden handle to a dagger with no blade. Aurelius was about to refuse it but shut his mouth when Solomon reached over it. Then Solomon grabbed the red cloak with golden markings on it.

  Aurelius furrowed his brows as Solomon turned around with the cloak hanging over his forearm. He was kidding. He wasn't kidding? What?

  "I— I can't accept that?"

  "Something to remember me by." Solomon offered it.

  "I'll remember you just fine," Aurelius protested.

  "Oh, come on. I saw the way you looked at it the first time you came into the treasury."

  "But... that's the cloak of the Soldier of God."

  Solomon's gaze grew soft. "I forfeited that title long ago. This cloak is a symbol of the courage to lead humanity into the future. I no longer possess that courage. But you do."

  Aurelius finally reached out and took the cloak. It was heavier than expected, but holding it in his hand and feeling the regal fabric and intricate golden markings sown into it was something otherworldly.

  When Aurelius was about to thank him, though, Solomon turned and went to go grab something more. He turned back to Aurelius with a dark tome in hand. Aurelius remembered noting it earlier, as it was placed opposite the gilded tome, his father's biography.

  "You may not like this," Solomon said, giving it to Aurelius. "But you will need it."