Derpy caught Celica’s wrist on the fourth attempt.
For a moment, he thought he had stopped her. Then she turned inside his grip, shifted his weight onto the wrong foot, and put him on one knee with her free hand poised beside his throat.
He stared at the claws.
“You keep waiting to see whether I will finish the strike,” she said.
“You keep changing it.”
“So will anyone who wants to hit you.”
Celica released him and stepped back. Derpy rose, brushing ash from his knee. The movement pulled at his shoulder, where her previous correction still ached.
He glanced toward Lewd. Blight had her working beyond the small line of ice-flowers, far enough away that the two pairs would not cross into each other’s exercises. Lewd noticed him looking and turned back to her instructor before either could speak.
Celica tapped his wrist.
“Stay here.”
“I am standing in front of you.”
“Most of you is. The rest has gone to watch her, or the room, or whatever you think you should have prevented.”
Derpy reset his stance without answering.
She circled once, studying the position of his feet.
“You already have experience. You have fought outside training rooms, on bad ground, with people moving where you did not want them. I am not teaching you how to survive your first fight.”
“It feels a great deal like it.”
“Because you are trying to do familiar things under different rules.”
She raised a hand toward the space beside him.
The air rippled. Derpy turned as two small shapes dropped through it.
Mia landed first, her ears moving as she took in the ash beneath her feet. Sphinx arrived beside her with a soft thump, tail flicking sharply before settling into an alert curve.
Derpy crouched at once.
“Mia? Sphinx?”
They looked toward his voice. Mia took a step, then stopped. Her eyelids lowered. Sphinx’s posture loosened beside her, and both sank into the ash before Derpy could reach them.
He put a hand against each of them.
Their breathing was steady.
“What did you do?”
Celica lowered her arm. “Brought them into the lesson. Let them settle.”
“They were standing a moment ago.”
“And they will be standing again. They are safe.”
He stayed crouched, watching until Sphinx shifted in sleep and Mia tucked herself more comfortably against the ground.
Celica gave him that much time.
“You need to learn to fight with them deliberately,” she said. “They already react when you are threatened. That is useful. It is not the same as knowing where you need them before the threat arrives.”
Derpy stroked Mia once, then rose.
Beyond Celica’s shoulder, the veil sharpened. He saw movement near the sitting-room doorway and recognized Lenora returning before he could hear her voice.
Lenora stopped within reach of the connection.
The sitting room remained around her: the table, the unlit lamps, Vaeloria turning toward the movement at the door. But along one edge of her vision, ash replaced the floor. A pale line of shore showed through the room, with Derpy standing on the other side.
She could not reach him.
Sinister stood close enough that she could reach his body instead.
Her blade rose between them.
He looked down its length, then at her face.
Ace came to stand behind her. She did not draw, but her eyes followed his hands. Vaeloria approached from the table, glancing toward Mk1 before giving the confrontation her full attention.
“Explain what is happening,” the queen said.
Lenora kept her blade steady.
“Lewd went in to talk. Now neither of them is coming back, and you have allowed everyone here to discover that one piece at a time.”
Sinister let out a breath.
For once, he did not appear pleased to have their attention.
“I do not understand why he keeps doing it.”
“Doing what?” Lenora asked.
“Choosing people. Finding reasons to stay attached when leaving the attachment alone would make everything simpler.”
“You are using his face to tell me that?”
He rubbed a hand over his mouth, stopping short of the blade.
“Yes. Apparently that is what this morning has become.”
Ace’s gaze narrowed. Vaeloria said nothing, allowing him enough silence to decide whether he intended to continue.
He looked only at Lenora.
“If I tell you something, it stays here. No one beyond this room hears it.”
“You have done very little to earn a private conversation.”
“Then keep pointing that at me. I am asking for your word, not your trust.”
Lenora studied him. The uncertainty in his expression was unfamiliar enough that she disliked wanting to believe it.
She glanced once at Ace and Vaeloria, acknowledging the witnesses he seemed determined not to address.
“I will not carry it beyond this room,” she said. “Now speak.”
His shoulders eased slightly.
“Derpy is buying time. The threats, the waiting, the dolls outside the doors—he wants them thinking about what might happen instead of deciding how to take him.”
Lenora’s grip did not change.
“Lewd heard an order to remove people by any means necessary.”
“He does not want them hurt.”
“That is a strange instruction to give if he means it.”
Sinister looked briefly toward Mk1. She remained where Riven had sent her, quiet enough to make her presence more noticeable.
“He is making them look at the next move.”
“And if Riven acts on the words he actually used?”
The question held him for a moment.
“That is why this needs to remain here,” he said. “If they learn it is a bluff, the time he bought disappears.”
Lenora did not mistake the answer for reassurance.
“You have still not explained why I should let you keep his body while he waits inside.”
“Because he is using the time. Celica has him training. Lewd too. The pets are with him now.” He paused, then added, “I am here so no one can take him away while they work.”
“You could have told us that before she went in.”
“And you would have accepted it?”
“I would have had the opportunity to answer.”
He looked away from her for the first time.
When he spoke again, the words came with less polish.
“We began working this out when we were first captured. A deal, a split, rules for what I could do. The five days were part of it. He wanted a way through that did not end with him surrendering every time someone threatened the people around him.”
Vaeloria watched closely. He continued to leave her outside his gaze.
“He cares too much about you,” he told Lenora. “And Lewd. And Vespera. He keeps finding more people to include.”
“You say that as though it is an illness.”
“I say it because I am trying to understand it.” His mouth twisted. “He even cares about Vaeloria. The she-demon of an elven queen who keeps standing in the middle of things she should have stepped away from.”
Vaeloria’s expression shifted into a small, interested smile.
“I am here,” she said.
“I noticed.”
Ace shifted her weight behind Lenora.
Sinister glanced at her. “He wants to know you better, too. Apparently surviving what he already has is not enough to keep him from collecting questions.”
Then his attention returned to Lenora.
“And he wants Lewd ready to use her grimoire properly. Not frightened of what it can do. Not reaching for something she does not understand while the room is already falling apart.”
Lenora lowered the point of her blade a fraction. It was enough to let him move his head without turning the conversation into an accident, and no more.
“So you are testing who gives way first. The queen, the Council, the War Office, and everyone standing between them.”
“Something like that.”
“You do not get to call it harmless because you hope the other side will stop.”
He gave no answer she could use.
At the edge of her sight, the ash shore faded. The connection thinned, leaving Lenora fully in the sitting room with the person who had offered an explanation she still had no way to verify.
She kept her weapon in hand.
Celica waited until Derpy looked away from the veil.
“Conjure something.”
He held out his hand. Frost gathered along his fingers, beginning the familiar curve of a scythe.
She stopped him with a touch to his wrist.
“Something else.”
Derpy let the unfinished shape dissolve.
“You could have specified that.”
“I wanted to see what you reached for.”
“Something I know how to use.”
“The scythe. The gauntlets. Useful choices, until you begin treating them as the only ones.”
She stood beside him and turned his empty hand palm upward.
“You can shape what you can think through. The weapon will carry frost because you are drawing on me. You do not need to force every problem into the reach of the same blade.”
Derpy pictured a straight weapon this time, something narrow enough to form without hiding errors inside an elaborate shape. Ice extended from his hand into a short blade. He tested its weight and corrected the grip before Celica could point to it.
She nodded.
“Better. Now remember that your weapon is not the only shape you can change.”
His eyes lifted to hers.
Celica drew him closer by the arm, examining the cold remaining along his wrist.
“I am a calamity book now. I was an ancient dragon before that, and I am still your partner. You became a dragon through me. The wolf came through that connection too.”
“I have not forgotten.”
“Then stop treating your forms as things you must wait for.”
She moved before he could answer.
Her fist struck his shoulder. Frostburn spread down his arm, locking it partway through the movement he had made to defend himself. The short blade dropped from his fingers and broke against the ash.
Derpy hissed and tried to pull back.
The frozen sheath held from shoulder to elbow.
“Change,” Celica said.
He pushed against it with muscle first. The effort sent pain through his shoulder and accomplished nothing.
Celica did not strike again.
“You are trying to win the wrong contest.”
Derpy forced himself to breathe. He reached for the remembered shape beneath the one he wore, concentrating on the shift rather than the ice.
His arm began to change.
The frozen casing cracked where it no longer fit. A line opened near his elbow, then spread upward until the sheath broke loose in fragments.
He staggered back, cradling the freed arm.
Celica watched him work his fingers.
“There. You changed the problem instead of becoming stronger inside it.”
“You might try explaining before freezing me next time.”
“Would you have believed how quickly you needed to do it?”
Derpy looked at the ice on the ground.
He disliked that he had to consider the answer.
Lewd had seen enough of the strike to lose the shape she was holding.
The small ring of miasma at her feet spread unevenly. She drew it back before it could reach Blight, then looked toward Derpy again.
Blight stepped across her view.
“He is standing.”
“I saw what she did.”
“Then you also saw him get out of it. Your turn to learn something.”
Lewd made herself face her.
“What now?”
“A weapon.”
She glanced at her empty hands. “The grimoire gives me poison.”
“Which you still need to deliver while someone is trying to stop you. Mist gives you an area. A weapon gives you another choice inside it.”
Lewd considered the things she had watched others use. Derpy’s rifle offered distance, his scythe reach. The gauntlets and the gloves he had worn against Joker put power close to the body, where she was least confident of keeping an opponent away.
She thought of Ace’s hammer and the space it demanded.
She needed something that would let her defend herself without surrendering the chance to strike.
Her left arm lifted first.
A circular shield formed against it. Its weight pulled her shoulder down, and she adjusted the size before letting the shape settle. A skull motif rose across the face, stark enough that she nearly dismissed it before deciding to leave it where it was.
In her right hand, a green blade extended from a forming hilt.
She pictured the grip carefully. The sword steadied. Near the hilt, a cartridge clicked into place, completing the image she had been holding.
Lewd stared at it.
Blight raised her hands and produced the same set: the round shield, the skull, the green sword with its cartridge seated at the hilt.
“That is irritating,” Lewd said.
“You will survive seeing your own idea used properly.”
Lewd lifted the shield. “I have held it for about three breaths.”
“Then let us make the fourth useful.”
Blight struck lightly against its edge.
The impact turned Lewd farther than she expected. She planted a foot to recover and brought the sword across too late to matter.
Blight waited while she reset.
“Do not hold the shield as though you are presenting it for inspection. Use it to decide where my weapon goes.”
Lewd angled it closer to her body.
“Like this?”
Blight tested the position with another strike. This time, the blade slid away instead of turning Lewd with it.
“Closer.”
Lewd’s fingers tightened around the sword.
Blight smiled over the matching shield.
“Prove I do not need joint custody with you and Derpy just to make sure someone is paying attention to this grimoire.”
Lewd felt the familiar urge to answer before thinking. She held it long enough to notice Blight moving her sword.
The shield came up in time.
“I am paying attention,” Lewd said.
Blight’s next strike was faster.
Sphinx reached Derpy first, pressing close enough to distract him from testing his shoulder.
Mia followed, entirely awake now and apparently untroubled by the transition that had frightened him. Derpy crouched and greeted them both, running his hands over them until he was satisfied they had come through unharmed.
Celica let him finish.
“They can change when they need to,” she said. “You have been working with transformations since you came into this world. Start treating that as something you can plan around.”
Derpy stood with Sphinx at one side and Mia at the other.
“You want all three of us against you?”
“I want you to carry a weapon and still know what they are doing.”
He began forming another blade.
Celica advanced before it was complete.
Mia reacted immediately. A burst of fire and ice left her mouth, hot-white and cold-blue streams twisting together toward Celica’s approach. Sphinx moved around the opposite side, low and quick, aiming to reach her from behind while the blast held her attention.
Derpy recognized the pattern and stepped to finish it.
Celica had already turned.
She slipped out of the burst’s path and struck Sphinx with an open palm as he closed in. Frost flashed across the ash. Sphinx skidded sideways, stopping with all four feet braced beneath him.
Mia tried to follow Celica’s movement. A second controlled sweep of cold caught her before she could redirect the attack, knocking her back with a startled yelp.
Derpy lunged.
Celica caught his weapon arm and stopped him with the unfinished blade pointed past her shoulder.
“Where were you going?”
“You hit them.”
“They are unhurt. Look.”
He looked because he needed to, not because she had ordered it. Mia shook herself. Sphinx recovered his stance and began moving toward them again.
Celica released Derpy’s arm.
“They gave you two different directions to attack from. You watched both, then arrived after I had dealt with them.”
He swallowed and looked down at the half-formed weapon.
“I should have finished this before moving.”
“You should have known whether you needed it finished at all. You had two companions creating an opening. You tried to repeat a combination instead of seeing what was left in front of you.”
Mia returned to his side. Sphinx circled once before settling opposite her.
Derpy let the incomplete blade disappear.
Beyond Celica, the veil still showed the palace. Lenora remained outside it. Riven’s orders remained beyond his reach. Nothing in the lesson made either problem smaller.
He drew a breath and chose a simpler weapon, one he could complete before Celica took another step.
This time, he checked where Mia and Sphinx stood before lifting it.
Celica saw the change.
“Again,” she said.