Chapter Text
Sage Kohga heard the storm before he saw it. It was supposed to be a peaceful morning. Every candle in his chamber had been lit, the handwoven tapestry glimmering like fish darting in dark water. His morning tea swirled in its cup to his right, tempting him with its fragrance. Prayer came first, however. Or at least, it would’ve had it not been for the shouts. They were far and few between at first, a lone cry shooting through the silence before screaming some unintelligible word.
“Miscreant,” he muttered, frowning and readjusting his position. He tried to let the flicker of the candles take him away to the whispers of Ganon, but just as he began to mumble his prayers and thanks once more, another shouted from the corridor.
“Would you shut your trap for five minutes!” Kohga barked, his fists slamming on his knees. He expected whatever hooligan that was sounding off to pipe down after that, and for a brief moment they did. Only for ten other shouts to ring down the corridor. Ten shouts grew to a dozen, a dozen shot to fifty, and before Kohga could even gape in disbelief, the thunder of panic was working its way through every crack in the walls.
“What has gotten into you freaks?” He sputtered and got to his feet, though his own yell was buried under the chorus of shouts clamoring through the hideout. He tripped over his own feet as he stumbled to the exit, nearly eating dust as he did so. “For the love of Ganon, this better be something good!”
He threw the curtain that hid his chambers to the side, his pulse beating angrily as hot blood coursed his body. There was hardly any time for rage, however.
The corridor was a river of scarlet and white, panicked Yiga sweeping down the hall as their echoes bounced all around. Kohga had to step back to avoid his feet being trampled, his words suddenly robbed right from his mouth as he watched the scene. A number of masks lay abandoned on the ground, even a few children were left to be pushed around by the crowd. Try as he might to pick context out from the crowd, their words had long turned into a meaningless swarm. Was the Calamity finally happening? Had he somehow missed the signs?
“Sage Kohga!” A familiar voice had him crane his neck immediately down the hall where Sooga was fighting against the current of Yiga.
“Sooga!” He yelped, a bit startled by how exasperated the normally stoic blademaster’s voice had been. “What has gotten into everyone? What is the meaning of this?”
Sooga finally squeezed through the crush of people with one quick lurch, stumbling into Kohga’s prayer chambers. He bent over, panting as he hastily tried to reclaim his breath. The sage gripped his bicep and shook him back and forth, his stress reaching a fever pitch.
“Talk now, breathe later! What in the good hell is going on, Sooga?” He hissed, practically unable to himself over the roar of his own blood flow.
The towering blademaster forced out a sigh and turned to the sage. Kohga could practically see his wince through the mask.
“It’s the hero.” He said in between haphazard breaths. “He’s… he’s vanished.”
The blood withdrew from Kohga’s face all at once. Despite the heat of the panic and the candles and the anger, he suddenly felt cold enough to shiver. All the prepwork, all the planning, all the anticipation, gone at quick movement of the lips. That slippery, slimy little halfbreed. It was enough to make a man puke.
“Oh,” was all he said, feeling as though he had just been beaten upside the head with a plank, “and of the princess?”
Sooga hesitated, likely biting his tongue underneath the mask. “Gone as well.”
Now Kohga really wanted to vomit. He released Sooga’s arm, fists trembling as he repressed the urge to explode altogether. Slowly, he paced to where he had been praying, Ganon staring at him blankly from his place on the tapestry. The candles flickered just the same as before. There had been no warning, no omen or vision. Ice grew in his veins as he trembled in the glare of his god. He thought them fools. He thought them all fools.
One fool stood above the rest of them, however, as king.
“Damn him!” Kohga bellowed suddenly, kicking the tea like it was no more than a stone. It surged like a wave through the air before splashing onto the tapestry, making its already red stitching appear dark with the drip of blood. Sooga almost jumped as the sage whipped back around, pointing a quivering finger at him. “That fool Cadraz has condemned us all to death! Wait for the ceremony, he says! Look what tradition has cost us! The keys to our salvation slipped through his fingers like sand and it's all his fault!”
“Sage Kohga, this may be past my place but you must keep your voice down.” Sooga urged, though he was barely intelligible himself underneath the chaos. “We mustn’t give the clan more reason to panic.”
“The time for calm has long passed, I’m afraid.” Kohga wrung his hands furiously, fire burning beneath his skin. “The very embodiments of our damnation have slipped away. Do you know what happens to us when they skitter back to their Ganon-forsaken castle? When that traitor tells their armies everything he knows?”
“It will be nothing short of catastrophe, my sa-”
“Catastrophe!” He threw his hands up in a rage. “They will strip these walls of everything we hold dear! And Cadraz… why, he would be content to stand and watch. Ten thousand years of history, gone with the snuff of a candle. I simply cannot allow it.”
Kohga lifted his mask and spat on the ground, as if to rid his mouth from the taste of the Master’s name. Sooga waited a moment, watching as the sage further ground his foot into the dirt and muttered obscenities.
“Forgive me for interrupting, but Master Cadraz sent for you.” He started, and Kohga promptly let out a bark of laughter. “He requires the presence of the entire council, and urgently.”
“Clearly our word means no more than a sand seal’s shit to him.” Kohga said. “What good would my advice do now?”
“No matter who is at fault, his problem is the clan's problem now.” The executioner said carefully. “Victory may not be so unattainable. Should you keep a level head, we may escape this alive.”
“Ha. It isn’t my head I’m worried about.” Kohga couldn’t hold back his grin. “Alright, fine. To the pit, right?”
“Yes, my sage. He is to address the clan.”
Kohga felt his anger sift into anticipation, his smile wide as he lifted two fingers to his face.
“They’re going to tear him to pieces.”
***
First, he directed his mind to the back of the crowd to truly gauge the collective reaction.
The constant chatter and panic bounced around the chasm like pounding waves. So loud, Lord Ganon could’ve heard them from the abyss below them. Perhaps their prayers could be finally heard, and he would rise to save them before the end was truly upon them.
Turning his head, he could see one of the Master’s advisors, Yki, standing still and firm like a tree, away in her own world underneath her mask. The other two advisors stepped around to calm the storm of red and keep it from becoming a full blown hurricane.
“Where’s the Master?!” one father demanded, clutching a teary toddler to his chest.
“The Master will join us soon, stay in your place!” Stallade countered with a stern look.
“I told everyone we should’ve killed both of them right then!” a blademaster yelled.
“Master Cadraz will address your concerns, he will not abandon us,” Peye reassured.
Their words did little to soothe the growing tempest. Yki didn’t help in the slightest, even when Stallade and Peye asked. She simply held still and quiet, keeping Riklah by her side. Riklah…she was a peculiar thing. A daughter of a celebrated line of undefeated blademasters, disgraced for the crime of trying to kill her own. And that “own” was now known to be their greatest enemy. Perhaps he could talk her into something…
“Footsoldier Riklah, daughter of Blademasters Yki and Valdame,” Kohga said as he approached the mother and daughter. Like a dutiful little archer, her head immediately swiveled to his voice.
“Sage Kohga,” Riklah replied as she gave a shallow bow. “What do you need from me?’
“Simple conversation,” he said. Stubby arms were crossed as he surveyed the blossoming riot. “I do think you are a rather important character in this whole Hero fiasco.”
Riklah seemed stunned for a moment. She froze like she was caught in a blizzard. Her face was hidden away too, but the memories of that day on the mesa was clear to see.
“Leave my daughter alone, Sage,” Yki commanded, still staring forward.
“Well excuse me, Miss Undefeated,” Kohga retorted. “I, for one, was about to say she was in the right for-”
Yki broke her stillness to face him, ready to shoot back, but she wasn’t the one to cut him off again with her voice. The sudden silence did a much better job at interrupting the Sage.
A thunderous echo of every soul turning towards one direction, and there he stood. Dressed in the pitch black robes of a priestess, the crowned mask of 6 horns reaching for the sky, the Master had finally appeared.
Cadraz began a calculated pace forward without saying a word. It became clear that he held a prayer slip in his hand, red ink fresh and bright as blood. He walked past Kohga, and he could clearly see what he wrote on it. In ancient Sheikah script was the simple word of Rise.
Despite their ire, the red sea made a path for him, but not bowing. Cadraz paid no mind and continued to approach the abyss. He stopped at its edge, staring down, just as expressionless as the chasm was. Slow and deliberate, he held his arm out, and dropped the prayer slip.
The whispers of his inaudible prayer were carried into the sky by the Highlands’ winds. A complex dance was performed by the fluttering paper as it descended into the darkness below, ever joyful to carry such a simple command.
Hopefully, Ganon would listen.
“The anger is tangible,” Cadraz began, turning to face the masses. His mask’s crown cupped the stars, smooth and unmoving. “Not just yours, but I feel it from the First Master, and Lord Ganon as well.”
Even for someone as hated as him, the voice of a Master commanded attention, and he held it in an iron grip. Not a soul spoke up against him. The only defiance Kohga could see was himself clenching a tight fist.
“The cries of anguish from both the living and the dead were the ones to wake me,” he continued. His tone was as flat as the plains. Unlike the rallying, glorious speech of the princess’s execution, he stood still. A tree waiting to be chopped down. “I could feel their travail stab into me, just as it has for you.”
Someone shouted a word, but Cadraz was able to speak over them. “Salvation had escaped our hands like water through the cloth. Do believe when I say, I know who is at fault.”
An uproar bursted out, the lid removed from the boiling pot. Indecipherable words of a hundred shouts filled the canyon once more. For once Kohga wished she could see through the sacred mask, just to know what the man was feeling. If he decided to show it at all.
“Now is not the time for bedlam!” Cadraz commanded, bringing a closed fist to his chest. He addressed the apoplectic crowd with no fear, frustration however edged on his voice. “Our freedom is not lost so long as we keep fighting for it! More than ever we must unite beneath the mask! We shall meet our foes with the unbreakable solidarity we’ve kept for countless generations! We-”
“What we need is some actual competence!”
Everyone turned quiet as those words echoed sharply through the canyon, down the abyss itself.
All eyes, masked and unmasked, were on him.
Cadraz snapped his head to Kohga, all limbs tensed to a tight pull, but he simply breathed in. “Sage, this is not the time for-”
“Now is most definitely the time for this,” Kohga sneered. “As competent leadership would mean we would be celebrating the spilling of blood of the Goddess, and the execution of the Hero. Instead, they have run free to the world that won’t hesitate to kill even the smallest of our clan!”
Hushed whispers rose from the crowd. Mothers and fathers gripped their children closer. Cadraz said nothing.
“Your rank should’ve disallowed you from even thinking of challenging Master Royos, you let the enemy live here as a repulsive joke of a lover,” the sage continued, a rolling list of sins unfurling before them all. “You have allowed the Hero to live not once, but twice.”
Cadraz could only stand at the accusations. All emotions were hidden away under the blank, cyclopian mask.
“Crimes unthinkable for our kind,” Kohga breathed in. And one more time he took a breath in, such a passionate speech taking a lot out of the short man. Finally he regained his voice, “treason of the highest order!”
Cadraz held his gaze, now the only two men in the land of Hyrule.
“Are you challenging me, Sage Kohga?” Cadraz asked.
“Let the position of Master of the clan be won only by bloodshed,” Kohga quoted. He could almost hear the ghostly echoes of Yiga herself in his words during this sudden rush of confidence. “Consider it a formal request to take that seat of yours for some new leadership, Footsoldier Cadraz.”
The words were out quicker than Kohga could take them back. The fire in his veins were immediately replaced with ice, his stomach twisting like a python. Cadraz’s neck twisted towards him, though his gaze faltered a bit before he finally settled on the sage.
“New leadership? Is that what you proclaimed, Kohga?” His voice was soft, amused, almost. The crowd silenced itself as quick as a departing storm, every eye going to where Kohga had stepped out of the council line. His tongue felt akin to a slippery eel, wriggling in a panic under the shadow of the Master’s six horns. Even so, he couldn’t allow himself to be a statue. The time had long passed for that.
“You heard me right. This clan has been floundering under your clumsy leadership for twenty three years too long.” He crossed his arms, and beneath his suit, they were ice cold to the touch. “If you were half the man as me, you’d have the gall to admit that.”
“Bold words for a portly sage.” The grin on the Master’s voice was as clear as day. He returned his attention to the crowd, arms spread wide. “My fellow Yiga, listen not to the words of the misguided. Though today has been discouraging for many of you, I’m sure, it was nothing more than a stumble. I have been nothing but dutiful and loyal to the best interest of this clan. We will retrieve the accursed princess and her hero, but that can only happen if we remain cal-”
“We wouldn’t have this problem in the first place if you had gutted them when I commanded!” Kohga took another step, his voice booming down the walls of the valley. “The clan should not be responsible for your failures as a leader!”
Cadraz’s amusement seemed to dissipate as he stared the sage down once again.
“You command nothing.” He said, voice cold and still. “If it wasn’t for the actions of your ancestors, you would be nothing. I would be awfully careful on the ground you tread, sage.”
“I command nothing?” Kohga chuckled. “My dear Master, look around you. Do you truly believe you haven’t brought upon the single greatest tragedy our people have experienced? Do you truly believe we would follow you into fire?”
Muttering sifted through the crowd like falling sand, even his fellow council members shifted nervously in place. Cadraz didn’t dare move, though Kohga didn’t doubt that his eyes were darting in a panic beneath his mask.
“Is this the leader that Lord Ganon himself would have blessed?” Kohga shouted to the crowd and pointed an incriminating finger at the Master. “For I see nothing more than a man with a mask bigger than his own brain!”
“His incompetence has doomed us all!” A young footsoldier from the crowd cried, followed by a chorus of worried murmurs.
“We could just find the prisoners again, right?”
“Not with him at the helm!”
“I say we deal with him ourselves!”
Shout after shout followed the next until the valley was a chorus of thunder. Kohga felt his own excitement bubble within him. The Yiga had rallied together in anger before, but never against a fellow clan member, one who grew up and fought and lived right alongside them, and never against a Master. He glanced ecstatically to where Sooga stood among the council members, as stoic as usual despite the very cliffsides shaking. Stallade, however, seemed to struggle to restrain himself. His fists opened and closed like a beating heart, stopping like a dead one when Yki whispered over his shoulder. The very seams of loyalty that Cadraz had so carefully stitched were coming undone right before his eyes. Kohga wasn’t sure he had ever seen something so beautiful.
The time to savor the chaos was cut tragically short, however. He jumped at the sudden whistle of a blade to his right. A screamlike sound soared over the heads of the crowd, whistling like wind before evaporating into echoes against the walls of the valley. All at once the voices were silenced, and Cadraz stood with his back hunched and his vicious sickle drawn, ripped out of its sheath so aggressively that the blade sang.
“Look at you all, bickering amongst yourselves like animals.” He hissed, his voice never so uncomposed and venomous. “Are we no better than the beasts that rule the wilds? First Master Yiga did not sacrifice what she did just for us to fall apart at the slightest challenge. We are better than that.”
The scorned Master straightened his back, sickle still drawn in his tightened grip. Despite their previous swell of anger, the crowd didn’t speak as Cadraz drew a breath.
“I have failed you all, as well as Lord Ganon. Your grievances are loud, and fellow Yiga, I hear you.” He pressed a hand to his chest, trembling with the rage of a tempest. “I refuse to fail you a second time. Not while I live and breathe.”
His mask turned like a blinding spotlight, trapped Kohga in its line of sight. His free hand went from his chest to the air, pointing steadily to where the sage stood.
“Sage Kohga, I accept your challenge.” His voice boomed. “Come. Let’s not make a further spectacle of ourselves, yes?”
***
The air in the highlands was thin, each breath just barely grasped before it slipped away again. Snow clung to every surface like static, and if Kohga’s body wasn’t frozen in place from discipline alone, he would have brushed it from where it collected on his head. A little cold was the least of his worries at the moment. Cadraz stood several paces across the plateau, fading in and out with the icey gusts that crossed their paths. His dark, featureless form nearly made him want to wince. He was staring down the phantom that would be taking his life.
The entirety of the clan encircled them, though behind the shroud of ice and snow, they were no more than a faceless wall, silent as they awaited the commencement of the duel. He wondered absentmindedly if there was still time to back out, to bow and beg for his high Master’s forgiveness.
No, he wouldn’t allow me to live, not after the humiliation, he thought numbly. Cadraz would have his life, whether it be a public execution or a silent assassination while he slept. He could either bare his neck or die shielding it. There was no walking away from him now.
Stallade emerged from the crowd, his silhouette a smudge against the white landscape. Kohga swallowed and balled his fists. Begrudgingly, he dragged himself forward, feet leaving small valleys through the snow as he trudged to meet the blademaster at the center of the plateau. Cadraz approached as well, his image becoming clearer through the flurry, until he was close enough for Kohga to see the paint strokes on his mask. They stood silently, nearly chest to chest, as Stallade looked between the two of them.
“The duel of ascension has existed as long as the clan has breathed. In that time, many have laid down their lives for the chance to continue what First Master Yiga began. Tonight, one of you will join them in death.” His words were stonelike, piling on Kohga’s back until he was sure he was going to break. He jumped a little as the blademaster turned his red eye to him, his stare like a living hurricane. “Sage Kohga, you are to engage Master Cadraz until victory or death. Do you honor this?”
His skin felt bloodless and cold, mouth agape in fear behind his mask. In an hour, would he still be alive to feel the sun bleed on his skin? To smell the burn of incense during prayer? To feel anything? Cadraz loomed over him, a vulture waiting for its struggling prey to die. There was no fear in his stance, only the certainty of a man who knew he would be seeing the next sunrise. And there was no turning back.
“I do.” Kohga said, keeping his voice steady. Stallade nodded and then turned to Cadraz, who never even glanced away from where he stared the sage down.
“And you, Master Cadraz, are to engage Sage Kohga until victory or death.” The blademaster said. Kohga glanced quickly at the Master's hands, only to shudder at how intensely they were balled at his sides. He could imagine the man tossing aside his weapon, tearing and punching and ripping until there was nothing left. And by the looks of it, he could hardly wait to get started. “Do you honor this?”
Cadraz didn’t speak for a moment, and he might as well have dangled Kohga over a river of sharks. He was savoring the moment, he guessed, prepared to prove himself to his people once more as a capable leader. All he had to do was say those two words. Two words and Kohga’s life was forfeit.
“I do.” The Master said, his voice so projected and clear that every ear in the clan caught it, foregoing the need to even yell.
Stallade nodded, holding his hands out palm up. Kohga felt his stomach twist, knowing what came next.
“The duel is set.” He said, voice booming for the crowd. “Today you face each other not as leaders, not as Yiga, but as men. Shed your masks and meet your opponent's real eye.”
Kohga’s hand felt numb as he grasped the outer rim of his mask. It slipped from his face, and he struggled to keep his eyes open as a flurry of snowflakes blew directly into them. He placed it into Stallades' awaiting palm, lips pressed firmly together as Cadraz removed his own mask.
It wasn’t an unfamiliar face, handsome angles and lines carved into fair, yet lightly scarred skin. His lids were lowered, red eyes glowering with the fury of a harvest moon. The Master leered down at Kohga as though he were nothing more than an ants nest, features steady as he took in the portly sage that dared to challenge him. The corner of his mouth turned up slightly, and without even breaking his gaze, he passed his horned mask to Stallade.
“No matter the outcome, you fight not for your personal interest, but for the betterment of the people, for Lord Ganon.” He held the masks tight in his grip, and Kohga felt a twinge of sorrow at the thought that he may never don his again. “May He be with you both.”
As quickly as he came, Stallade turned and strode back to the crowd. Kohga didn’t dare watch as he disappeared back into the dark silhouette of the clan. Cadraz had yet to even blink, and now that the blademaster was gone, his smirk had evolved into an unwavering grin.
“I hope you’ve said your prayers, sage,” he said, his eyes all encompassing like the void of the night sky, “And your goodbyes.”
“I only intend on bidding farewell to you.” Kohga retorted, his whole body still tingling with numbness. The Master chuckled, though his demeanor couldn’t have felt more sinister.
“Lord Ganon shall devour your soul.” He said, voice barely audible over the blizzard around them. “I, for one, cannot wait to deliver you to Him.”
There was no time to respond. Somewhere in the shadow of the audience, a single drum beat sounded. Their cue. The both of them turned on their heels, and Kohga was grateful he didn’t have to endure the Master’s stare anymore. For a moment, he expected a sickle to find itself slashed across his back, but as a second drum beat echoed and he took another step, he realized that even a man as enraged as Cadraz could respect tradition.
The dry, hollow rhythm continued, and the gap between them grew larger, a new step taken for every drum beat. No Yiga dared to release a breath, nor did the mountain wolves call out. Nothing else existed outside of the sound. Kohga savored his heartbeats, savored his breath, knowing that once silence fell over the plateau, his blood would paint the snow.
When it felt like he would have to walk to the ends of the earth, the drum beats halted. He sucked in a breath, and at his side he wrapped his fingers around the hilt of his demon carver. Cadraz was likely doing the same, his palm practically bleeding with the force that he gripped his sickle. The winds stilled around them. Hyrule sat in wait.
At once a shriek like death pierced the silence. The duel whistle. The permission to kill.
Kohga whirled on his feet, ripping his demon carver from where it sat in its sheath. He couldn’t have acted any later. Cadraz’s sickle tore through the sheet of falling snow, spinning and cutting the air like it moved through tall grass. His hand acted on its own, moving defensively to where it was aimed at his neck. Sparks met snow as he bashed the flying weapon away, sending the sickle swinging to the ground.
He moved to swipe it from where it rested, half hidden by snow, when he was blinded by the sudden plume of red smoke that erupted over it. Cadraz appeared in a flurry of prayer slips, his heel coming down on Kohga’s wrist. He swallowed a scream as a rush of pain seized his arm, instead swiping his weapon instinctively at the Master’s calf. The fabric of his suit split where it met the blade, and blood flew in an arc over the ice, but even with his leg slit by the teeth of the demon carver, he didn’t budge. He only stared with that wicked grin.
“I cannot feel pain, Kohga,” he ground his heel deeper, his wrist on the verge of shattering entirely, “not by the likes of you.”
He lifted his foot to retrieve the sickle, and in that moment, Kohga whipped back his hand. There was hardly any time to lick his already acquired wounds, however. As soon as that sickle was back in Cadraz’s grip, he lunged, the air in front of Kohga’s face becoming a field of razor sharp swipes. He spun his own weapon at his swipe, reflecting every swipe that he could manage and powering through the cuts that now littered and bled down his cheeks. Cadraz wasn’t serious, he was a leopard playing with its food. Giving the sage a merciful death was far out of the question. It would be much more fun to slice him up and then watch him empty when he strangled him like a sponge.
Though Kohga’s crushed wrist still throbbed with unending pain, it ran on adrenaline alone, shooting out to stop punches and swipes where it could. One more blunder and it’s over, he thought with every passing moment, one more, one more, one more. In an opening almost too quick to spot, he hooked Cadraz’s sickle around his demon carver, tangling the weapon like a net. A surge of relief seized his body, and he had the gall to grin. Yes!
No more than a quickened breath later, Cadraz spun, becoming a blur amidst the snow. Kohga shuddered as the Master’s kick met his side, and in that moment of weakness, he ripped the carver out of his hand with his own weapon. Another kick to the chest sent him stumbling, and a final crack as Cadraz grabbed his head and crunched his nose over his knee left him panting on the ground.
In a daze, he clutched at his face, breath stalling when he realized that he couldn’t tell where his suit ended and where his blood began. It felt as though a hot, sticky egg had been cracked over the front of his face, an egg that left nothing but pulsing and numbness behind. Overhead, Cadraz lingered, blinking in and out of view with the blurred winds. The silhouette of his vicious sickle was perfectly clear however, even more so as the Master bent down and positioned the tip at Kohga’s shoulder. He kept his foot on the sage’s sternum, ensuring that he wasn’t to take another step for the rest of his fleeting life.
“I won’t waste any words on you,” he said, blood dripping down from a cut on his forehead where Kohga had scored a lucky shot, “just pray you die from the shock.”
He buried the tip of the sickle right above his collarbone, grinning wickedly as he watched the new flow of blood that stained Kohga’s suit. His mouth twisted open wordlessly, eyes bulging as Cadraz dragged the shallow wound across his chest. It was as if a bolt of lighting had split across his skin, opening his very soul. His fingers scrambled for purchase, but with the pain paralyzing his arms, all he could do was fondle the snow that laid around his body like a tomb. The Master twisted the sickle, sending more storms of agony across his body. Just when it seemed as though he was going to pierce his heart and end it, he ripped the sickle from his flesh and tossed it aside. Kohga’s chest surged as he finally dared to draw breath, but he was stopped immediately as Cadraz knelt over his bloodied body.
“Enough of these toys.” He spoke calmly, a smile befitting of a mad man stuck to his face. He brought his hands to Kohga’s neck and squeezed. “I’ll kill you myself.”
No, no, no. His mind screamed as his airways closed. His body lurched as he tried to breathe, only for Cadraz to stop it himself with the simple grip of his fists. Already, he saw dark spots growing in his vision, his heart slamming in his ears like the drum that had condemned him to death. His hands pried at Cadraz’s, scratched and ripped with all their might, but the man was a vice, not even when he clawed weakly at his face. His final seconds were coming. He knew that as soon as the fire started to seize his lungs. He was dying in vain.
His hands fell away from Cadraz’s face, though they had yet to collapse completely. They hovered in the air, fingers splayed and shaking as his vision started to double. Staring down eternity, however, he couldn’t have felt more alive. I won’t die today. His mind rasped. I won’t die. I won’t die.
He clasped his hands together, six fingers folded over each other and two straightened in front of his face. I won’t die.
A blue, shimmering wall suddenly formed between the Master and the sage. With a single push, Cadraz was flung off of where he sat, the wall dragging him through the snow until it evaporated some twenty feet away. Kohga didn’t know how he managed to stand, didn’t know how he even managed to breathe, but with the blood flowing down his chest like a geyser, he knew this needed to end and fast.
He clapped his hands in front of his face once more, his legs leaving the ground to rest folded in front of him. Cadraz was already barrelling across the clearing, his eyes bloodshot with the rage of an interrupted kill. Despite the rapidly approaching threat, Kohga closed his eyes. He raised his palms to the sky, all the sages that came before him whispering in his blood. He felt the rush of wind as the two boulders he called upon appeared overhead, each one gleaming with the Yiga emblem. Cadraz barely evaded the first boulder that Kohga sent his way, slamming his body against the ground as the rock nearly grazed his head. Kohga grunted as he swung his palm out, the second boulder flying faster than the first.
What looked like fear crossed Cadraz’s face as he tried to roll out of the way of the boulder, but he was an inch too short of fully evading it. The rock caught his shoulder, and even he couldn’t swallow the scream as it knocked his shoulder out of socket. The boulder disappeared in a burst of red smoke behind him as it met the earth, a cloud of snow puffing with the impact. He clawed fruitlessly at his arm, which now hung uselessly by his side, as he fought back to his feet. For the first time in the fight, his gaze was diverted. Kohga was out of his vision. This was his chance.
Please don’t kill me, he thought with his lips and eyelids pressed together. At once, all the power he possessed and all the will he had left to live converged, and he nearly laughed as a steel, spiked ball manifested over his raised palm. It was larger than the two boulders combined, and his arm nearly collapsed over the sheer weight.
He whispered a prayer, and before a breath could be wasted, he catapulted the ball like he had never thrown before.
Cadraz heard it coming. He ceased his struggles with his arm, head shooting up like an alerted wolf. It was already too late.
His body shuddered in place. The ball rolled to a slow, but steady stop behind him. For a moment, he swayed like he was nothing more than a bush in the wind. Kohga was sure that if he could, he’d be glaring at him, those damned eyes burning with a fury he had never known was possible. But there were no eyes for him to glare with. No ears, no mouth, no neck.
The wind blew his headless body backwards, his limbs splayed like roots, and an almost perfect line of blood stretched from his empty shoulders to where the ball now rested in the snow. Flakes fell gently onto his still warm body. All gales halted and utter silence filled the entire world.
Not a soul from the crowd spoke, or even moved. Kohga found it hard to even breathe himself, eyes beginning to burn from how the wind blew into them. He lowered his feet back to the ground, the heavily bleeding gash over his collarbone feeling like nothing more than a pinch. He was alive. He won.
After what felt like a millenia, he saw Stallade emerge from the crowd. He walked almost in disbelief, like he was sure that Cadraz would redeem his name in the end. The blademaster approached the beheaded Master, sinking to a knee as he examined the body. He stretched his hand out, as if to check for a pulse, but it seemed that even he knew it was futile. He got back to his feet, brushed off his knees, and with a healthy stride, he stood at Kohga’s side. No words were exchanged as he gripped the sage’s wrist and raised it to the sky.
“Master Cadraz has fallen. Sage Kohga emerges victorious.” His voice boomed across the plateau, falling on the ears of every Yiga. “Long live Master Kohga!”
The crowd shortened significantly as the Yiga clan fell into a kneel, every head bowed. He could hardly breathe, could hardly contain his excitement as he watched the entire clan fall around him in honor and reverence. Then, as their shouts filled his body and every inch of his being, he grinned.
“Long live Master Kohga!”