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He's leaving himself open from behind, Skirk notes from her rocky vantage point where she watches the kid—Ajax—fight in the clearing below.
The three hilichurls will be no problem for him. He's made good progress with his training in a short amount of time, pleasantly challenging Skirk’s initial expectations for him. Ajax parries the closest monster’s club with such a force that it stumbles back, and he wastes no time before plunging his blade into its stomach. The monster disintegrates with a pained growl when he pulls his sword out of its body. The dark guts that drip down the boy’s blade are the only lingering remnants of the hilichurl’s existence.
He’s well used to the short sword he’s using, but he still wastes energy with unnecessary movements before striking.
Hm. I’ll have to give him more precision drills.
The challenge of this fight is to focus on multiple opponents while avoiding attacks from the mitachurl and its axe, which Ajax has been doing a fine job of so far. The mitachurl’s large stature gives it a reach advantage, so he’s decided to use his opponent’s momentum against it by dodging out of the way after baiting it into a charge. While not exactly what Skirk had in mind, the strategy is sound enough. This has so far bought him enough time to deal with the two remaining hilichurls, felling one more before the mitachurl recovers.
Unfortunately, the kid seems to have forgotten about their ability to dig up and launch slimes. The mitachurl digs its claws into the dark, abyss-stained ground and wrenches free a small electro slime, which it lobs at Ajax. With his attention elsewhere, the slime hits him squarely in the back.
Skirk shakes her head. As expected.
The slime explodes in a shower of sparks on impact and Ajax loses his balance, falling to one knee. His sweater is thick enough to save his skin from the brunt of the effects but it likely still singes the ends of his orange hair. Skirk doesn't move from where she watches, simply crossing her arms and scowling a little harder. She knows it’s nothing he can't handle.
At least his recovery time is getting faster, and he didn't drop his sword this time, she thinks as the kid pushes himself to stand again.
With renewed focus, Ajax closes the gap between him and the final hilichurl, finishing it off with a slash across the chest. By the time it falls to the ground Ajax is already locked onto the mitachurl, who stalks towards him with an electrified axe in its clawed hands. It raises the axe high for a powerful overhead strike, but the boy moves quickly and uses his sword to slice through the exposed armpit.
So he was paying attention. She’s pleasantly surprised. Skirk has to fight the minuscule smile that wants to form on her face. A few days ago, over dinner, she had been telling him about the major artery locations in most vertebrates. Ajax had been busy eating his food so she hadn't expected him to remember.
Blood spills from the wound and the axe falls with a heavy thump as the mitachurl recoils, its body crumpling to the ground.
Seems he went for the axillary artery this time.
The creature’s roar sounds more like a wail, crying in pain as it bleeds to death. Ajax hurries the process along with a cut to the neck, though Skirk doesn't know if he’s motivated by mercy or by bloodlust. She doesn't particularly mind either way, as long as he isn't being overly cocky.
With all the monsters’ bodies having returned to the earth, only puddles of dark blood remain as evidence of the fight.
Ajax turns around to face Skirk, waving his hand in the air. She can make out his grin even at this distance. Under different circumstances, it might have been endearing.
“Master! Did you see that one?!” He calls out to her across the clearing, clearly feeling proud of himself despite taking that unnecessary hit. The boy's voice bounces off the jagged abyssal rocks surrounding the area.
Skirk’s scowl remains in place, but her eyes narrow at the disturbance of space behind the boy. A forming rift. He doesn't even see it.
Reckless. All the noise attracted another monster. I told him not to shout.
She's content to let him deal with whatever beast crawls out of there on his own, it's his problem, after all. Maybe a surprise attack will finally ingrain that lesson, she thinks.
Ajax is facing away from the rift, he’s preoccupied with trying to get the black gunk off his blade. The rift opens wide like a yawning maw ready to swallow the boy whole, but what emerges is the towering form of a single rifthound. Its massive jaws are open, poised for striking—
Lesson be damned, that’ll kill him!
In the time it takes Ajax to turn around and face the source of the noise, Skirk is already moving. Space bends at her command and time slows as she utilizes her void rifts to warp to him, propelled forward by the Serpent’s Subtlety. She is just in time to close the distance and reach out to push Ajax out of the way.
The mouth of the beast instead latches onto her right forearm. The rifthound’s teeth sink in and crush the crystalline surface, but she feels no pain from the artificial limb. Struggling against its hold proves futile, she tries to pull back but she can't free her arm.
Oh well. This is why it pays to use two swords.
Skirk summons one of her blades with her other arm and cuts through the rest of the abyssal limb herself, just above the elbow. It was already damaged anyway. “Out of the way,” she tells Ajax, who obliges with a hurried nod as he scrambles backwards from where he’d been sitting stunned.
Now with ample space, Skirk delivers four precise slashes to the rifthound to immobilize each of its limbs. This will be a good demonstration for Ajax; the venomous claws of rifthounds should always be the first priority to neutralize. Finally, she ends its life with a powerful swing that distorts space around the blade and severs the creature’s head from its body.
As the body of the rifthound dissolves, Skirk turns back to face Ajax. She’s already glaring and preparing to lecture him about shouting when she sees the wet tears gathering in the boy’s eyes. Her face softens fractionally, “did it injure you?”
“No,” he answers in a quiet and wavering voice, accompanied by a shake of his head.
“Then why are you crying? Tears are unnecessary, you’ll waste your energy.”
He points at her broken arm where the normally smooth geometric planes have become jagged from the bite’s force. The other half of the crushed limb is lying somewhere in the clearing behind them, but she makes no move to retrieve it. It too will disintegrate in time. That kind of damage isn't worth repairing anyway, it would take just as long to fix as it would to make a whole new one.
“Your arm,” he says, sounding every bit as young as he actually is. He's sitting very still, trying not to let the tears fall. “You got hurt… ‘cuz of me.”
Oh. Had he not realized? This boy, worrying about her. How foolish.
“Do not worry for my sake, these limbs are not real. You did, however, draw attention to us with your shouting. I’ve told you before to keep your voice down out here. You were reckless.”
Ajax visibly brightens up, he dries his eyes with his sleeve and looks up at her. “Your arms are magic?” He asks, clearly ignoring everything else Skirk just told him.
“They are made with abyssal energy, but that is not important. The Abyss is quiet, you need to learn not to be so loud here or it will attract monsters.”
“Uh huh, yeah, I won't do it again! Pinky promise. Anyway, are your legs abyss magic too? Wait, what happened to your real arms? Ooh, can you make yourself super tall? Can you show me how you do it?!”
Great, he's distracted. She’ll never hear the end of this now…
-
Despite Skirk refusing to answer any of Ajax’s nonsensical questions, the kid kept asking them.
They returned to the campsite, a secluded area of the Abyss with few monsters that Skirk had claimed as her own. The two of them were sitting around the campfire when Ajax started pestering her once more while waiting for his food to cook. She finally agreed to show him how she remakes her arms, thinking that would satisfy his curiosity. It did not.
“How does it move?” Ajax asks, staring intently at the purple energy that coalesces around Skirk as she begins to reform it.
Are all children this talkative? She isn't used to answering so many questions.
“The abyssal form mimics the functions of a real limb, including muscles. The abyss enhances my body’s natural regenerative capabilities, and because my body is easily able to adapt to the abyss, I can reform my limbs.”
“So you can grow parts of your body back?” He asks with a slight tilt of his head, but those dull blue eyes never leave her arm, seemingly hypnotized as she works on reforming it.
Channeling the energy into her body, the abyssal “bone” of Skirk’s severed arm lengthens and morphs. Fibrous tendrils of muscles, ligaments, and sinews as dark as the night sky crawl down her reforming bones, creating a convincing facsimile of a human arm.
“I can naturally heal minor wounds with minimal scarring. The abyss allows me to do the rest.”
"That's so cool, you're like a lizard!” He says gleefully, finally looking up at her. Ajax seems to mistake Skirk’s unimpressed look for one of confusion, so he clarifies. “My dad said that there are lizards that can lose their tails and then grow ‘em back. But I've never seen one ‘cuz it's too cold.”
“Your food should be finished cooking. Eat it,” She says in lieu of a proper response to the boy’s comment. The energy forming her new arm solidifies in place as a tough, faceted surface, just as it had been before the fight. It’s a tiring process, but not one the warrior is unused to. She will still be able to train as usual. The new fingers respond as a natural hand’s would when she flexes them, testing her grip.
This hand, the right one, had been the first one to go all those years ago. After the fourth time she broke her wrist during training, the bones wouldn't heal right even after her master’s interventions. It was impairing her movements, so her master—Surtalogi—told her to cut off the failing limb. He taught her how to replace her limbs with ones that would never hurt again.
Skirk did as she was told, and continued to cut out her flesh with her own blade and replace it with the abyss each time an ill-treated wound began to rot, or her body became too damaged for even her master to repair.
Cut out the parts that make you weak. Kill and bury what holds you back.
And if that meant she wouldn't have to look at those burn scars anymore, then so be it.
Ajax crouches down next to the campfire to retrieve the spiney fish that had been roasting on a stick. At least by now he’s learned not to complain about the quality of edible creatures down here. Without turning around, he asks as if making casual conversation, “did it hurt when you lost your real arms?”
Skirk doesn't answer, not right away. She finds her gaze lingering on the charred marks on the back of the boy's sweater from the electro slime. Her prediction was correct, the ends of his hair have been singed. “Your food will be cold if you keep asking so many questions.”
Ajax makes a grumbling noise of general complaint, but quiets down and eats his food. Good, he's done a lot of physical activity today and needs his energy. Thankfully, the feelings of hunger are more pressing than his curiosity for the time being.
-
Ajax is not the same as Surtalogi.
It has always been hard for Skirk to conceptualize the fact that her master—The Foul, who she has watched destroy galaxies and devour alien gods—was once a child of Teyvat, just like Ajax. Just like she was, on her home planet. After all, how does one wrap their mind around a Cosmic Calamity having once been a child?
But despite any similarities the two may possess, Ajax has a family. He has a life to return to on the surface. He is not vengeful in nature, at least not yet.
That is why, several days later, when Ajax asks her to teach him how to use the abyss like she does, Skirk refuses.
“Why not?” Ajax asks, setting down his polearm and turning away from his training dummy to face her with a pouty look on his face, one that he probably intends to come across as determined, but misses the mark. “I can handle it!”
Skirk shakes her head. The human form is a delicate thing. Wielding the abyss in the way that she and her master do is a commitment, a decision that cannot be undone. Those who aren't strong enough will be devoured in both body and mind.
“Ambition alone will not make up for a lack of strength,” she counters with a flat glare.
“What?!” He exclaims, apparently shocked by the obvious facts of the matter.
Skirk doesn't budge from her position, and the boy huffs out a breath before continuing. “But I am strong enough, it's only been a few days and I’ve basically got this polearm thing down!”
How presumptuous. “Unfounded arrogance will get you killed. Knowledge of weaponry is only one part of being strong.” She makes a move to turn away from him and return to her own sword practice, but Ajax refuses to let the matter rest.
“Then teach me! Make me strong! Isn't that why I'm here?”
She stops.
…This child. Does he even know what he is asking?
Surtalogi became one with abyssal energy. He fully remade not only his missing limbs, but his entire body. He repaired damage, yes, but also enhanced the fibers of his muscles and the structure of his bones. He wore the abyss like a living, growing armor, replacing any and all human impurities he once had. He was a true master of the abyssal arts.
Ajax is too young, too weak, too human for that. It is too cruel for a child, especially when the people of this planet are so incompatible with the abyss.
He is just a child.
She was a child, too.
He should hold on to the humanity that he still has.
That will only leave him vulnerable. Weak.
He still needs to live in Teyvat.
He has already seen the depths. He has already become a target.
Skirk recognizes that spark within this young, lost boy: the nascent need to devour.
It's too late. The light has already been stolen from his eyes.
“I can make you strong,” she finally replies, “but you must understand that it will not be easy. You will forever be in the eye of the storm. Is that what you want?”
“I don't want to be weak anymore,” he says firmly, holding his body tense. When that determined voice speaks, Skirk sees something akin to light in his eyes.
She thinks of the question that her master asked her, many years ago, and asks Ajax the same. “Even if it costs you everything? Even if you are judged and damned for using foul means to emerge victorious... Do you still wish to become stronger?"
He stares up at her, having already made up his mind. “Yes. I’m not scared.”
It's a lie, of course. They both know that. He wouldn't have survived down here before she found him if he was not afraid for his life. He wouldn't be learning swordsmanship from her if he didn’t fear the monsters of the depths, or if he wasn't haunted by the whale song.
If this boy had no fear, he would not have begged Skirk to teach him to defend himself after she first saved him. He fears his own weakness, and she remembers that feeling.
She lets the lie pass by, uncontested.
“...Very well. Let us begin.”
-
It takes days of practice interspersed between his typical drills for Ajax to begin to grasp using the abyss. Abyssal energy is everywhere down here, so it is easy to find. Likewise, it clings to living things. It does not let go easily, and will follow him even when he leaves this place.
While Skirk’s body is more compatible with abyssal energy and can regenerate false limbs using it, Ajax cannot. Instead, he can use it to strengthen and protect his existing limbs, allowing him to channel more power through them for a limited duration.
He can use the abyss to enhance his mortal form, in essence a modified version of The Foul’s technique.
Skirk watches closely with her eyes trained on Ajax’s hand as he tries once more to harness the abyss, drawing it towards him. It’s a slow and clumsy process, but the dark miasmas of the air start to coalesce around his hand. It hardens into a solid material not unlike her own limbs, only less refined.
Claw-like plates settle across his fingertips and she notices the movement on his face when his eyes widen a touch, some kind of surprise or satisfaction she’d guess, within their deep blue. But the lapse of concentration causes the claws to become unstable and shatter into sharp fragments, a few of which just barely graze him.
Skirk is quick to provide the boy with feedback before any frustration can take root. “Since the abyss is not being integrated into your body, you’ll need to devote some of your attention towards maintaining its form,” she explains. “With practice, this will become second nature.”
It's a sign of his focus that when she instructs him to try again, he does so silently and without comment.
A gauntlet of darkness begins to take shape along his forearm. It is crude and utilitarian, but it moves with him when he flexes his fingers. Not too terrible, it’ll do for now, she decides.
“Now, in order to function as armor, it must withstand pressure.” She allows Ajax two full seconds to understand and react to this before striking him with the pommel of her sword.
Although he fails to assume a proper defensive stance in time, he is at least able to bring his arm up to guard against her. The strike connects and fragments of armor are sent flying off from the point of impact, even with how much she had been holding back. “Hey!” he whines, “I wasn't ready!”
Absurd. “Your enemies will not wait for you to be ready. I gave you two extra seconds—that was generous.”
He scoffs and kicks at the blackened dirt. “Whatever, I've got it this time,” he declares and assumes a proper defensive position before drawing out the abyss and molding it to his arm once more.
The next hit cracks the armor and the sharp edges dig into the skin underneath, but he mends the abyss overtop of it and falls right back into position.
They run the drill over and over again. Skirk switches up the direction of her attacks, aiming for different locations so that he doesn't get complacent with his guard. All the repetitions wear down Ajax’s stamina bit by bit, but after several hours he’s able to sustain a blow from one of her weaker strikes without a single crack in the armor. That skill will need to be honed further, of course, but it’s acceptable for now.
“Not bad. Now let's see you do that with your non-dominant arm,” she instructs.
Even with his bangs stuck to his forehead by sweat and panting hard, Ajax looks triumphant. His arms will certainly be badly bruised come tomorrow but he grins anyway, already rolling up his other sleeve. “Yeah!”
The sound of a swinging blade continues to fill the air into the long approximation of evening. Skirk exercises her control, striking Ajax with precisely measured strength. She aims first for consistency as he gets his bearings using the other arm, before increasing the power as he successfully blocks. By the end of their training session he’s able to maintain the abyssal armor across both arms and hands, and tank blows he never would have been able to otherwise.
He tries to launch a counter attack at one point, reaching upward with clawed hands to stop her blade in its path. He digs his heels down into the ground, trying not to let himself be pushed backwards by Skirk’s might, but to no avail. His arms give out under the force of the swing, but at least the armor still remains. Having come to know this boy quite well, Skirk recognizes that he is hungry for more—another challenge. The endurance training is boring him.
She could choose to indulge him, use more of her strength than she normally would and actually spar against him. But if that armor breaks…
That abyssal armor is all that stands between her blade and his skin.
She knows that Ajax is no stranger to getting hurt. He’s perpetually covered in minor scrapes and cuts from training exercises or ill-advised monster fights, and has even sustained more serious injuries while in her care. She knows he can handle the pain and the fatigue.
But the thought of her relentless blade against this boy's frail, human skin… it sickens some small, cowardly remnant of herself.
She turns her attention back to Ajax who’s now sitting on the ground and leaning back on his hands, looking up at the hazy purple expanse of what one could call the “sky” down here. His chest heaves with effort as he catches his breath, but he appears to be pleased with himself despite the exhaustion.
“You’ve earned yourself a rest,” Skirk says, and his eyes snap to her when she speaks, “return to the campsite and do what you wish. I will stay here and finish my own training for the day.” She trusts that he’ll be fine on his own for a little while. “And be sure to take care of those cuts before they get infected,” she adds, “we can resume your training once I am finished.”
He pushes himself up off the ground and stands. “Thanks Master,” he says to her while he stretches out his arms and rolls his shoulders. She takes the opportunity to observe how the first bruises are starting to become visible along his dominant forearm from how his sleeves are rolled up. His skin is all scratched and a few cuts are still bleeding sluggishly, but none are deep enough to be a real cause for concern as long as they stay clean.
Ajax heads back to the campsite on his own, promising to save her one of the fish he cooks, to which she does not bother responding. Once he’s gone Skirk refocuses her body and mind, losing herself in the repetitions of her bladework. With the slicing of a blade and the exertion of her reconstructed muscles, her mind falls silent. The lingering doubt disappears beneath the surface of consciousness. Her cold resolve hardens, fully focused on the task at hand, devoting her mind and body to these movements in the here and now.
Her technique, her speed, her endurance: all are components of this power she has forged for herself, honed to a knife’s edge by hands of tempered steel.
Come the next approximation of morning, she will have Ajax resume his training, and she will not falter.