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Victor has spent almost every single day since their coronation practicing with the Sunblade, and today is no exception.
The sun hangs high in the sky, beating midday heat down onto the training courtyard where Victor has been drilling for the past who-knows-how-long. Wooden training dummies are lined up on one side of the open center, most of them in various states of splintered and cleaved, and Victor is currently hacking away at one of the last left standing. The six-foot Sunblade spinning between his hands leaves unexpectedly precise cuts, but every so often he falters and the blade bites dirt, throwing up dust and gravel from the ground and curses from Victor’s mouth.
It used to be so simple. Victor could flourish it as easily as flicking their wrist, so fluidly it floated like silk in the wind rather than hammered steel and heavy gold. It was as natural for them to wield as it was to breathe air, a second self made perfectly to match in every way.
But since coming back the familiar hilt was heavy and unwieldy again. They were thrown back to the hours and hours spent in the courtyard when they were newly crowned, muscles aching and hands burning and hair slicked back with sweat. It was hours they thought they had clawed their way past, hours they had worked to put behind them.
And yet here they are.
He takes another few jabs, the satisfying resistance of metal hitting wood echoing through in his bones as the sword meets its target - one, two, three, then another slash in a graceful arc ricochets off the dummy’s hip and lands the strike in the gravel of the training pit floor.
“ Damn it all ,” he swears, not loud enough to be a shout but by all means louder than any proper king should dare. The blade winks cheekily in the sun in response. Victor hefts it back up, frustration burning in his chest and dripping down his hands. This used to be so easy, so practiced, but now...
Victor swings again and this time the hit lands, splintering deep. A hard-fought win, and they thank at least one thing for working out right as the blade swings past their ear and leaves another gash on the dummy’s chest. His breath is coming sharp and short, but it feels more comfortable than sitting still.
It took the first few weeks to even be able to handle the blade at regular power again. Each time they got close the sword would flare and all they were left with was harsh burns on their palms and knuckles that overlapped almost perfectly with the faint traces left there already. Since the last few scoldings from Damien and Madeira Victor had to stop trying to use the blade’s abilities altogether, but the itch to let the familiar gold creep back up and sink into his bones was as tempting as ever.
The Sunblade is starting to feel warm now, the marks left behind on the wood looking just a bit black around the edges.
One final swing curls all the way around him before getting carried forward by momentum and the sword sinks into the training dummy, embedding itself through its shoulder. He leaves it there in the wood, though, leaning on the hilt and letting the familiar ache and burn of exertion flood his muscles. A faint static buzzes in their fingers, but the still-healing burns on their wrists scold them in a voice all too close to Madeira’s, and they flex their hand in an attempt to drive it away.
“So this is where the Golden Lion of Leon comes to sharpen his claws.”
Victor starts, dragged out of his own thoughts, and looks in the direction of the unfortunately familiar voice. Mac is framed in one of the courtyard arches, wearing an ever-smug expression and what must somehow pass in his mind as a training uniform. Victor just raises an eyebrow, trying his hardest to ignore Mac’s provocation.
“I don’t see you here often, Mac. Did you need me for something, or did you just come to observe?”
“I’m not just here to watch the show, if that’s your question.” Mac replies, starting to weave his way towards the weapons racks. Victor straightens up from where they were leaning and can’t help but laugh.
“So you’ve taken an interest in combat, then?” Victor asks, pulling the Sunblade out of where it was stuck in the dummy just a bit more forcefully than required, “I wouldn’t have pinned you as the warrior type, high mage.”
“Magic alone hasn’t kept me alive all these years, my king ,” Mac tosses over his shoulder. His stained hand carefully traces over the weapons rack until it lands on a particularly devilish looking polearm, pulling it out from the others and weighing it’s balance.
Victor weighs his own options just as carefully as he watches. Mac clearly came here looking for a fight - nothing that demon did was ever by accident. The only question was if it was out of malice or simple boredom, and if it was intended to be verbal or-
“I see you’ve been busy,” Mac continues, giving the king a once over, “I do hope I’m not interrupting anything.”
Victor doesn’t mind looking like a mess. It’s a training court, not a ballroom, and a shirt sweat-soaked from noonday sun and hair wildly escaping from where it was tied back was par for the course with them. But Mac’s raking glance is still just a bit more scathing than he would have liked, still twists a knife just a bit too far to ignore.
“Not at all,” Victor replies, their voice taking on a cordiality that says ‘ if I don’t put on my nicest face for you right now I’ll run you through ’.
The two regard each other silently for a beat, waiting to hear how the other will fill the empty space. The air under the arches seems to take on a chill as Mac finally chooses his weapon, while the training court around Victor shimmers with intensity. Mac, almost sensing Victor willing him to leave, makes his way to the gravel of the training court where Victor is standing and leans on his spear with a carefully calculated air of defiance. Victor’s hand twitches ever so slightly on the hilt of the Sunblade, and the tiny movement draws Mac’s eye.
“In that case, how about you indulge me in a match?” Mac’s words are coated with the same dripping court charm as Victor’s. “I’m sure seeing The Golden Lion himself fighting firsthand would be… enlightening.”
“I’d be happy to, if you don’t mind being sorely out matched,” Victor says, and now it’s Mac’s turn to raise an eyebrow.
“Confident, are we?” Mac remarks, fluidly swinging his polearm behind one shoulder and looking at Victor down the blade’s edge. “I certainly hope you can keep that hubris in check.”
And now Victor’s kingly smile is replaced by a wry grin, his feet smoothly sliding out into a fighting stance. They’d been dying to knock Mac down a few pegs for weeks now, and this was the perfect opportunity.
The two of them slowly begin to circle each other, like two apex predators facing off, but with an air of amusement on both sides, too. Grips twitch, eyes narrow, the birds themselves seem to hold their breath in anticipation. Neither one is giving any indication that they’ll attack first.
Victor eyes Mac up and down as they move toe to heel, gravel crunching under step after carefully-calculated step. Even before the fight began, Mac moved with a fluidity that was just on the upper edge of human, and his grip on the polearm shows he’s no novice when it comes to combat. But Victor can also see just the tiniest falter in how the polearm swang with each step, just a little bit of off-balance in his moving stance. He might be practiced, but he’s no master.
And in that split second Victor makes the first move, lunging forwards with the Sunblade swinging in a downwards arc.
Mac easily dodges the blow.
“You betray yourself, your highness,” he taunts, kicking up dust behind him.
The sword almost bites gravel before Victor pulls it back up and continues the motion. They switch their grip halfway through, hands crossing over and between each other with practiced grace, and feel the weight and momentum of the Sunblade shift effortlessly with them. The next swing misses Mac by much, much less as the mage swiftly dodges and brings his own weapon up to counter. The resounding clash of metal-on-metal shakes through the pillars of the courtyard, sending a few birds flying at the sudden noise.
“The first strike isn’t always meant to hit,” Victor tosses back.
The two exchange a seemingly endless flurry of blows, each one matching the other’s jabs with parries and attacks of their own. Victor’s hands are starting to feel warm again, a familiar crackle spreading across their fingertips like the heat of summer. He takes a sudden breath as a particularly hard hit from Mac sends the shock reverberating up their forearm, and their next swing is sent ever so slightly off. Shit.
The Sunblade sails past Mac, just missing his shoulder, and without hesitation he lunges spear-first through the newly-created opening. His spear glints almost as sharply as his too-pointed smile and he closes the distance between himself and Victor in a flash, but as Victor moves to dodge the attack Mac pivots on one foot and the spear slices through the air from the other direction to hit them while they’re unguarded, this time aiming for Victor’s throat.
The blow catches just a hair's breadth from Victor’s face, clashing with the hard leather hilt of the Sunblade. The rest of the sword is braced on Victor’s forearm and leg, pulled up backwards from where his missed swing had landed to use the extra length of the hilt in a defensive hail mary.
Victor inhales sharply as another sharp shock runs through them. The heat of the Sunblade is starting to bite into the exposed skin of their arms and make smoke curl from the wooden shaft of Mac’s glaive.
Mac bares his now fully canine teeth, pushing ever so much more against the king’s parry, and despite the pain Victor pushes back in kind. The two are locked in a battle of wills, struggling against each other's strength just inches apart.
Victor can feel the crackle of the Sunblade starting to travel up their arms and sear down their shoulders, setting their hair on end like a lightning storm. Damien and Madeira’s voices come back in full-force now, telling him ‘Stop this right now and drop the blade, you’re going to scar again, you can’t keep overextending yourself like this, it’s not worth it ’.
But as quickly as the Sunblade’s magic starts to bite and burn at their back it drops away entirely, and suddenly all Victor feels is that rush , and all Mac can see is the static in Victor’s curls and the flash of gold in their eyes, and there’s no time for him to-
And then Mac is flying backwards, his boots kicking up gravel as he frantically digs the back of his polearm into the ground and slides back to a stop. He looks up, trying to catch the wind that had been knocked out of him. A second ago they had been evenly matched, and now…
It’s back .
It’s all Victor can think, two words on loop in their brain. There’s only one thing this exhilarating, and they would know it anywhere, know it in their sleep. It feels like he finally found a part of himself that had been missing, and he would probably cry if the adrenaline running through him wasn’t so focused on the crouching figure slowly pushing itself up on the opposite end of the field.
“That’s more like it,” Victor whispers to the sword with a grin, tightening his grip on the hilt and feeling the heat rushing in his veins.
“Now I see why they really call you the Golden Lion,” Mac says, rising to his feet and taking a moment to eye Victor up and down. The king was practically glowing, golden energy crackling up his hands and arms and shining across the blade. Their hair really looks like a mane now, their whole being radiating something altogether otherworldly, and for a moment Mac almost thinks he can see a bit of...
He grits his teeth and rolls his shoulders, feels something pop that probably wasn’t good for a human body to do. It’s his turn for his eyes to flash gold now, just for a second, becoming catlike and animal before fading back to a deep black, and something shifts in him.
So much for their confidence being unfounded, Mac thinks to himself, and he readies himself into a fighting stance.
“Let’s see what you can do now .”
This time the circling is all careful, vicious calculation. None of the bemused curiosity from before is left, and the banter punctuating the field has fallen silent, giving way to the sounds of crunching gravel and heavy breaths.
The Sunblade is almost white-hot in Victor's hands now, heat dancing off of it in waves, but they hold it like it’s nothing. Mac twirls his pike in his hands, noting the uneven balance where the sword burned away part of the shaft. They both adjust their grip in the same instant, muscles tensing in near unison, but it’s Mac who makes the first move.
He lunges forwards inhumanly fast, crossing the full training court in half a second, but Victor brings up the blade to meet him regardless. Their weapons hit with a crack, small splinters of wood bursting outwards from where the polearm crashes against white-hot metal and burning gold.
And this time, there’s no struggle, no easy back-and-forth like a dance. Victor’s swings are fast, precise, powerful, pushing Mac further and further towards the outside of the ring with each blow. They spin back and thrust the sword forwards, forcing Mac to dodge to one side, before swinging it overhead to strike from the other.
Victor doesn’t feel the Sunblade in their hands anymore. It’s almost impossibly light, a fluid extension of each motion they make. This isn’t heavy gold - it’s burning and brilliant and just as good as before. Maybe even better , they think to themself as the magic flares again and their eyes flash just a bit brighter.
Mac’s breathing heavy now, too. It would barely show to the casual observer, but Victor’s trained eye can see he’s starting to crack. It’s there in the small shake in his arms as the mage gets pushed backwards with yet another parry, the half-audible mutter of a curse under his breath, the barely-there stutter of fatigue in his feet as he shifts his weight before lunging forwards again.
That millisecond of hesitation in Mac’s normally seamless motions gives Victor all the edge he needs. Victor sidesteps the attack easily, letting Mac’s momentum take him all the way past them and leaving his back and weapon exposed.
The Sunblade streaks down onto Mac’s glaive. With a flick of Victor’s wrist the bladed end flies across the training pit, embedding inches deep into one of the half-destroyed wooden dummies and almost toppling it over from the sheer force of the impact.
Mac growls, snapping his eyes back to Victor, but they’re already going into the next swing, aiming right for the back of Mac’s shoulder. Mac manages to half-turn, brings the shattered wooden remains of the polearm up, tries desperately to keep on their feet, but he doesn’t have time to ready his stance.
And for the second time today Mac gets flung backwards, but this time he drops what was left of his weapon in the process. He tries to skid to a stop but his balance was thrown by the hit and he slips, his back and elbow biting gravel and throwing up dust. Victor twists his blade back and sweeps it forward again now, stopping what would be a death blow mere inches from Mac’s now-defenseless neck.
“Checkmate,” Victor pants, and even while his body looks worn out his hair is haloed in gold and his eyes are shining like the sun. Both are silent for a moment, eyes locked in a vicious silent conversation and chests heaving after the intense bout.
Mac’s impressed, but he’ll never show it. The most Victor can see is the whisper of a smile dancing on the edge of his cold expression as he looks up at them.
“Looks like I underestimated you, your highness,” he says, all too smoothly for someone who was nearly killed just moments before. He pushes himself up onto his good elbow and winces at what feels like a few bruised ribs.
Victor just grins back, letting the now-cold blade fall, and with it their guard.
“Next time I shouldn’t let you off so easy,” Victor says back, extending a hand down to Mac, “Give you a nice scar to remember me by.”
“What makes you think you could even land the hit?” he returns mildly, but he has as close to a genuine smile now as Victor’s ever seen, and he takes the peace offering.
Victor pulls Mac to his feet with very little effort and lets him dust off his clothes before letting go of his arm. The two of them stand almost eye-to-eye now on the pitch, and despite the fight being over there’s still a lingering tension that doesn’t seem to leave with Mac’s admission of defeat.
“Thanks for the match,” Victor says, taking a step back to lean on the guard of the Sunblade and run a hand through his hair. “It’s been… gods, I don’t know how long. A long time since someone even got close to going even with me like that. Didn’t know it was still possible, honestly.”
There’s genuine thankfulness in Victor’s words, too, because it’s true. They’d outclassed everyone else in the palace years before their coronation - except for maybe King Mother - and sparring had become a predictable series of short, three or four hit matches. But Mac… He’s not afraid to go toe to toe with a king. He held his own through the whole fight, even tried to keep going after the Sunblade was at full force and his polearm had been rendered nearly useless.
“I assure you, Price,” Mac says coldly, “Given the chance, I could go more than ‘even’ with you. You’ve seen next to nothing of what I can do.”
And Victor’s wry grin is back, even wider now, and where most people would be terrified at the barely human magic and threats, he seems almost elated. They lean forward on the Sunblade, getting just a bit closer in towards Mac.
“In that case, how's the same time tomorrow?”
Mac lets out a sharp laugh at Victor’s question.
“As much as I would love to even the score, I don’t think you’ll be back to full strength by then without proper attention,” Mac says, looking pointedly at Victor’s hands. Victor follows Mac’s eyes down and his breath catches for a moment.
“ Oh .”
Burns trace up his arms like bolts of lightning, red and harsh against his skin. How did I not feel those before? How did I not see them? Victor thinks in shock, turning his left hand over and seeing the delicate lines of the blade’s hilt scorched into his palm, and then the searing pain registers all at once like a gut punch. It rips through them, their casual lean becoming strained in an instant. They cling to the crossguard to stay upright and grit their teeth in an attempt to stave off the worst of it.
“Guess I overdid it…” they manage to get out before another wave of pain washes over them.
Victor is so distracted trying to struggle back up that Mac manages to walk to them without any reaction at all. The king doesn’t even flinch until stained hands are gripping their wrists, their muscles tensing up at the sudden shock.
“Mac, what are you-”
Mac’s eyes flash gold again as he starts muttering something under his breath and tracing down the burns with dark fingers. The color lingers in his irises just a half-second, but it’s long enough for Victor to notice.
They forget, sometimes, exactly what Mac is. As strangely as he behaves and unusual as his habits are, it’s easy to remember the fact that he’s not human without truly registering what it means. Easy, that is, until his pupils are slitted and the air around him shifts, and the shiver Victor feels down the back of their neck reminds them of Damien all those years ago.
Mac’s hands are tight around Victor’s wrists still, but the touch doesn’t hurt as much anymore. Victor watches as Mac keeps tracing over his injuries, almost-invisible shapes swirling in the air around his hands. The burns start to scab over, bloody red making way to the tight pink of new scars and then fading away more and more until nothing is left at all. He lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding as the pain disappears, and the tension in his shoulders relaxes all at once.
“Oh… wow. ” Victor breathes out as Mac finally lets go of them, leaving nothing but bare skin and old scars behind. He flexes his hand - there’s not even a whisper of the burns from weeks ago, let alone their fight. The best healers in the kingdom would’ve taken days to heal injuries that bad to completion, and Mac did it in a matter of seconds.
“Like I said…” Mac says, with a smug fox-like grin, “Next to nothing.”
“... Thank you.”
It lingers in the air for a moment, but if Mac is thrown by genuine thanks he doesn’t show it.
“Well, what kind of court mage would I be if I didn’t use my skills to serve the king? We can’t have you dying all over again and-,” Mac says before catching himself. He looks like he was about to say something else much more biting and thought better of it, and he turns towards where half his shattered polearm lays on the training ground.
Victor watches Mac pick up the remains and prod at the splintered ends, sparks of magic jumping across its surface to try and see what can be recovered. They run their fingers over their knuckles, still in disbelief that what used to be so charred was as good as new… Or maybe even better , they think, and they glance up at Mac again.
Looks like we’ll be able to settle that score after all.
“Tomorrow, then?” they ask, something hopeful behind their words.
The magic weaving through Mac fingers dissipates and he looks at Victor over his shoulder with a smirk. His teeth are no longer pointed, but the half smile is still oh-so-sharp.
“Tomorrow,” he says.