The mountain had grown quiet.
The wind still whispered through the cracks, and somewhere in the distance, a dying beast released its final breath in a gurgling sigh. But the endless tide had finally, mercifully, temporarily ceased. The portal pulsed behind them, patient as eternity, waiting for those who would never come.
Norlan stood atop the mountain of corpses, his chest heaving with controlled breaths, his body painted in layers of blood that had begun to dry into a second skin.
His checkered haori, that proud garment of stark geometry, had become something else entirely,the black squares had swollen with absorbed moisture, the white squares had surrendered completely to crimson, and the whole thing hung from his shoulders like the flag of a nation drowned in war.
"Not bad," Titus said.
He still hadn't moved from his position atop the constricting boa's corpse. His legs remained crossed, his posture relaxed, as if he'd spent the afternoon watching clouds rather than observing the slaughter of hundreds of awakened beasts. The boa's head, crushed beneath him, had long since stopped leaking.
"Not bad?" Norlan's voice came out rough, scraped raw by hours of breathing through blood and violence. "I just killed—"
"Three hundred and forty-seven." Titus held up a hand. "I counted. Well, three hundred and forty-eight if you count the one currently bleeding out behind that rock. It'll be dead in a few minutes. Give or take."
Norlan turned to look. A massive feline creature, striped in patterns that would have been beautiful in another context, lay pressed against a boulder. Its flanks heaved with failing breath, its eyes still fixed on the portal with that desperate, consuming hunger.
It would die soon. It would die, and it would try to crawl toward the light until its last muscle gave out.
"And you just sat there."
"I sat here," Titus corrected. "There's a difference. Posture matters, my lord. Especially when you're about to receive instruction from someone vastly your superior in matters of violence."
Norlan opened his mouth to respond, then closed it. The exhaustion was catching up to him now, the adrenaline fade leaving behind the true weight of what he'd done. His muscles trembled with micro-tears. His divine aperture pulsed with the strained spiritual energy.
He should feel satisfied. He should feel powerful. Heck, he had just slaughtered over three hundred of beasts at the same level as him.
Instead, he felt like a child who'd swung a hammer until his arms gave out and called it craftsmanship. He knew it well. He was a high human. His bloodline had evolved and his upper limit had grown tremendously. One could even say the fight was not even fair. For the beasts of course.
Titus rose from the boa's head with the fluid grace of someone who had never known stiffness or fatigue. He stepped over corpses as if they were slightly inconvenient furniture, making his way toward Norlan with an ease that bordered on insulting.
"You fought well," Titus said. "For someone who's never fought."
"Was that a compliment?"
"It was an observation,your lordness." Titus teesed and stopped a few feet away, his ancient eyes studying Norlan with an intensity that made the younger man want to check if something was crawling on his face.
"You have raw power. More than most. More than almost anyone, actually. Your bloodline..." he waved a hand vaguely "....ensures that. But raw power without refinement is just... noise. Loud noise, but noise nonetheless."
Norlan's jaw tightened. "I killed three hundred and forty-seven of those accursed things.."
"Beasts driven mad by a portal's call. Beasts who couldn't think, couldn't strategize, couldn't adapt. They came at you one wave after another, and you hit them until they stopped moving." Titus's voice carried no mockery, which somehow made it worse.
"That's not fighting. That's labor. You're a very effective laborer, my lord. But laborers don't survive the third trial. Especially when the beings we will be facing there will be as viscous and cunning as ourselves. They will be intelligent and trained. They will be scions of gods and devils,of huge behemoth lineages that posses racial Expressions. Do you understand what that means?"
The words hung in the blood-thick air.
Norlan felt something shift in his chest—not anger, exactly, but something adjacent to it. The recognition of truth he didn't want to acknowledge.
"Then teach me, I know you already posses an expression" he said.
Titus smiled. It was not a reassuring expression.
"What do you think I was doing all that time? For the next course of lessons,you needed to be exhausted. Too exhausted to think but,I actually underestimated a high human."
***
Titus led him away from the peak, away from the portal's pulsing light, down into a sheltered depression between two massive outcroppings of stone. The corpses didn't reach here as the beasts had focused their assault on the portal itself, leaving the surrounding area relatively clean. Relatively.
"Sit," Titus commanded.
Norlan sat.
The stone was cold against his blood-soaked trousers, but he'd long since stopped noticing discomfort. His body had entered that strange state beyond exhaustion where sensation becomes abstract, something that happens to someone else.
"Close your eyes. No,don't meditate. Don't reach for your divine aperture. Just... feel."
"Feel what?"
"Everything. Nothing. Your body. The space around your body. The air between us." Titus settled onto his own stone, facing Norlan with his legs crossed in a mirror of his earlier posture. "The first thing you need to understand is that you're thinking too much."
Norlan's eyes opened. "Thinking too much? I wasn't thinking at all. I was just—"
"Reacting. Yes. But reacting is not the same as not thinking. Reacting is thinking, just faster. Your mind processes information, evaluates threats, chooses responses. It does all of this in fractions of a second, but it still does it. There's a gap, however small, between stimulus and response. And that in that gap is a thought."
"What's wrong with thought?"
"Nothing. In most situations, thought is what separates us from beasts." Titus gestured vaguely toward the carnage behind them. "But in close combat, against an enemy who knows what they're doing, that gap is death. The moment you think about blocking an attack, you've already been hit. The moment you consider where to strike, your target has moved. Thought is a luxury you cannot afford. Especially when your opponent is stronger than you. Especially when the opponent is faster than you. When he reacts faster than you"
Norlan frowned. "So I should just... not think? Fight on instinct?"
"Better. But still not quite right." Titus leaned forward, his ancient eyes catching the fading light. "Instinct is fast, but instinct is also stupid. Instinct tells you to flinch when something comes at your face. Instinct tells you to protect your vital organs. Instinct is an animal's response. It's useful, but predictable. Your enemies will know your instinct. They will exploit your instinct."
"Then what?"
"There is something beyond thought and beyond instinct. Something that exists in the space where the two meet and cancel each other out. The body knowing, without the mind telling it. The self responding, without the self choosing. The gap closing until there is no gap at all." Titus's voice dropped, becoming almost hypnotic.
"When an attack comes, your body moves before you know it's coming. When an opening appears, your strike lands before you see it's there. You do not think. You do not react. You simply... are. And in that state, you are untouchable."
Norlan sat with the words, letting them settle into the exhausted spaces of his mind. It sounded impossible. It sounded like something from ancient legends, from stories told around fires about warriors who could not be defeated.
"It exists," Titus said, reading his skepticism. "I've seen it. I've felt it. For brief moments, in the crucible of combat, I've touched it myself. And you—" he pointed at Norlan with a finger that had killed more beings than most armies "—you have the potential to live there. Permanently."
"How?"
"By dying."
Norlan's eyes snapped open.
Titus laughed,a genuine sound, warm and almost kind. "Not literally. Though close. The path to this state requires you to become comfortable with death. Not your enemy's death but your own. You must learn to stand at the edge of annihilation and feel... nothing. No fear. No concern. No desperate calculation of survival. When your body understands that death is acceptable, it stops trying to protect itself. And when it stops trying to protect itself, it becomes free."
"That sounds insane."
"It is. Most worthwhile things are." Titus rose from his stone, cracking his neck with a sound like rocks grinding together. "Stand up. We're going to try something."