Chapter 160: Cowardly
Aris came in front of a massive stone building, the home of Tempest, the ogre king. She had noticed that he started gathering his best warriors for some reason. She had an inkling as to what he might be planning, and she did not like the idea of that.
She walked up to the large double doors. The guards on either side did not try to stop her. After all, she was a forest lord, and they knew that they could not stop her. They also knew she was close to their king, and so she was safe.
The doors opened, grinding along their hinges. She looked in and saw Tempest seated on his elevated stone throne with his legs crossed, looking down at her with a smug expression.
"I knew it was only a matter of time before you showed up," he said with a smile on his face.
"What are you planning?" she asked straight.
"Come on, not even a hey, how are you?" he asked.
"If this is some sort of plan to attack Ren now that he is no longer around, I’d advise you against that, Tempest," she said flat out. She did not want him to start something that would surely explode out of proportion.
Not to talk about how it is very cowardly. You did not face him when he was here, and now you want to attack his home when he is not around to stop you.
Tempest looked down at her from the throne with that same smug expression holding steady on his face.
"You are saying I am a coward," he said.
"I am saying what you are doing is cowardly," Aris replied. "There is a difference. You did not face him when he was standing right here in this forest. You had every opportunity, and you chose not to take it. Now that he has left, you want to move against his home." She held his gaze. "That is cowardly regardless of who is doing it."
Tempest’s jaw tightened.
"I am not scared of him," he said, and there was something underneath the words that was working too hard.
"I did not say you were," she replied simply.
That landed differently.
His feet hit the stone floor before she finished the sentence, the impact cracking the step of the throne as he rose to his full height, his hand moving to his side.
"He destroyed my brother," Tempest said, his voice dropping into something lower and more controlled than the rage behind it wanted it to be. "He took the Calamity Orc’s position by force. He came into this forest and acted as though he owned everything he looked at."
"That is how it works," Aris said. "You know that. When someone stronger arrives and takes a seat, that is the law of the forest. You have lived by that law your entire life."
"Not this time," Tempest said. "I will not stand here and let a dragon come in and take what does not belong to him. He does not run this forest."
"Then you should have faced him directly," she said. "You had chances. Multiple chances. You could have ended it face to face."
The words hung in the air between them, and she watched him receive them, watched him understand exactly what she was doing with every sentence, laying each one against the same pressure point, and she did not stop because stopping would have been the same as agreeing with him.
His hand found his sword.
He pulled it free and pointed it at her, the tip steady despite the anger in his arm.
"Do not push me, Aris," he said.
She looked at the sword. Looked at him.
"Are you seriously pointing that at me?" she asked. The smile that came was small and genuine and carried nothing friendly in it. "Do you not remember what happened the last time we fought?"
"That was different," he said, and the smile that came back from him was the sharp kind. "That was open ground on neutral territory. You are in my home now. I have the advantage here."
"And yet," she said, "even with that advantage, you still cannot defeat me."
The sword lowered slightly.
Not in backing down. In the particular motion of someone whose hand had moved before they decided what to do with it.
He pulled a breath in through his teeth.
"Leave," he said. "If you are not here to help, then leave. I am moving at the break of dawn regardless of what you say."
She shook her head.
"If you do this, you will create a problem that spreads beyond just you and him," she said. "He will not see a line between your people and mine. He will not make that distinction when he comes back and finds what you have done." She looked at him directly. "Is that what you want? Because I am trying to avoid that. I would rather we find a way to exist alongside this dragon than spend the rest of our time fighting something that has already shown it is stronger than what came before it."
Tempest stared at her.
The word came out quiet and flat.
"Coward."
She looked at him for a moment.
"Takes one to know one," she said.
He moved.
The sword came around fast and horizontal, carrying the full force of his frustration behind it, and Aris stepped back and let it pass in front of her, the displaced air from the swing brushing her face. The blade hit the stone pillar beside her, and the explosion of force that came off it blew dust and chips of rock across the entire hall.
She was already moving before the debris settled.
He came again, faster this time, the sword working in short, committed arcs that covered different levels, high then low then crossing back across the center. She moved around each one, inside, outside, back, the footwork clean and unhurried, her own hands empty, not reaching for anything yet.
Each swing that missed hit something else instead, stone cracking, floor splitting, the hall taking the damage that could not find her.
They broke apart.
Both of them stood across from each other in the wreckage of his own entrance hall, breathing.
She looked at him.
"Since this is what you want," she said, "do not blame me for what happens next. Even if you die."