keep it in time
"Master Minoth, your posture..."
Aegaeon doesn't even have it in him to think of the upright honor of His Majesty in this moment, disheartened and crestfallen, nearly, as he is at the sight of Minoth's languid, hunched stance with which he handles the tachi. Up from the dust of the training ground, he rises, his knees bent inward toward one another, his center of gravity surely dislocated. And yet Minoth does not back down, does not fall.
He must, soon enough, however. Mustn't he? The picture of him, across from Brighid, slunk low with heaving chest. Aegaeon cannot tell if he is breathing that deeply, or if his haunches keep him such asway. The pronation of his feet, the splay of his thighs...
There is fluidity, and then there is slump.
Then again, it's not that Minoth's attacks aren't hitting, either, but mayhap Brighid is just parrying each strike no matter how wayward so that sparring can continue uninterrupted. Aegaeon must admit that he has never borne witness to his own weapon being used at such length by another. Is he always this fast?
Well. A critical matter and crucial aid to speed is the proper footwork, the proper form. Aegaeon and Brighid, the peerless tanks of the Empire, do not evade by simply ducking. Moreover: they evade. They do not dodge.
(And Emperor Hugo takes each eminent smite on the face, so bold behind his roundest shield and cutter.)
Minoth, meanwhile, is bobbing and weaving, avoiding each flick of Brighid's whips not so much neatly as artfully - even, Aegaeon suspects, purposefully letting their tips lick the side of his chin, fractal burns. The section of hair persistently omitted from the ponytail dangles perilously at skews and shears, itself characterizing the loophole every time Brighid seems to have Minoth surrounded, all on her own.
Just look at her. All curves, and yet all angles. She only tilts (scintillating, facetful jewel) when it comes to Beltane Blade.
Purposefully...ah, but now, that brings the whole of it into relief.
Minoth's fluidity is in service of timing, of rhythm. He does not go so far as to calculate an order of flourishes to fold and flow one into the next, and does not waste stray steps making up the dance, but where Aegaeon's Arts are easily chained and yet decoupled from rhythm, each breaking at pace of another, Minoth's cannot perform to their utmost, or even at all, without one another. In sequence, in step, in style.
And to watch Master Minoth perform Breaking Wave...
He unsheathes the tachi, readies himself, stares down the target. All as it should be, as it must be. His setup for the aerial twist, impeccable. Tucked, a lithe and elegant column of brown and blue. The sheath, held behind his back, hidden, the proud banners heralding it. For no purpose, perhaps, other than flair.
But then, rather than keep his arms in as he moves through the air, Minoth holds out the tachi with a firm arm (crooked just so, at the elbow, just enough), letting it slice in a spiral all around his central revolution.
His boots meet the ground heavily, with a thud; he does not perch, does not balance. Maybe it is the human flesh, that makes him so-?
He grins at Aegaeon, the barest sheen of sweat decorating his forehead. The tachi is handed back with a bow, not so much a pantomime of facetious folly as an escape, sincerely meant, for gasping breath.
(The heaving? Indeed, the heaving.)
All Aegaeon had lent was the use of his weapon, which he now receives gratefully, since Minoth could use it well as a human but couldn't (shouldn't, wouldn't) force a reciprocal connection upon a bonded Blade. It saved the trouble of deliberation - over whether or not Aegaeon could even bear to break from his liege, for this peculiar experiment and excursion.
An incursion, even; Brighid strides over, two swords trailing from a single upturned hand, and makes to inspect Minoth's post-battle state. Aegaeon had not expected it, but that is what the free hand had been for, it appears, as she turns his face one way, the other. Minoth is pliant, though his eyes dance.
"No serious burns, I gather," she pronounces evenly. "You are, as ever, an intriguing opponent, Minoth."
"Just studying the master," Minoth grins again. Smiley, are we? Aegaeon can hear Brighid think it, see her eyebrows wriggle at the sound.
But then something wavers in the ether, out of pattern, and it's over.
The Flesh Eater stands tall, now, drawn up to full height and leaving his arms pensile only because he won't be pressed to prop them upon his hips, as Prince Addam might. There is no remnant of a wavering, slouchy affect. Minoth is stiff, stern.
What could it have been? Neither Amalthus nor any news of him has come present, and Minoth has no especial reason to fear any one of their group. Even Addam has not wandered by, to make his friend self-conscious.
"Are you alright, Master Minoth?" Aegaeon ventures. "You look a little...chilled."
Hardly the right word for it, since Brighid is right here. But Minoth shakes his head, apparently also perplexed, and turns away without so much as a clasp of Aegaeon's shoulder in passing. He judders as he does it. The rhythm is gone.
"The absence of resonance?" Aegaeon wonders to Brighid. "Could it be? But he was fighting so well. Proving himself most assiduously."
"Aegaeon," Brighid corrects gently, "it's not the absence of resonance, but the sudden lack."
"Beg pardon?"
"He likes your company. He enjoyed fighting with you - by your side, by your weapon. And now..."
She doesn't have to finish the thought. Just think, Aegaeon, how much you hate to be away from His Majesty. What sorrow the slightest departure brings. What a knife to your Blade's livelihood.
Put that way, with the eyes of empire behind him, it's no wonder Minoth's head hangs low, as he fights.