“Do you plan on continuing your life with Aisha like this?” I asked.
His response to that was a bit longer. “I love Aisha. She watched over me my whole life, helped me, and raised me. I’m grateful to you and my moms, but Aisha has been there for me—more than anyone. If she says she wants to be with me, then I want to protect her and stay by her side. I want to help her do what she wants to do.”
His answer was a little different from what I sought, but as I suspected, there was no hesitation on his part. I guess that meant he’d also done some thinking of his own over the past year. I was still a little concerned that she seemed to be his primary focus, but… Well, some relationships were like that. That was fine.
If he had said this back then—if he’d acted like this—things would’ve been different. Then again, my reason for rejecting their relationship had nothing to do with any of this, so maybe they would’ve ended up running off anyway… At least Eris wouldn’t have struck him.
Had this situation helped him build a foundation for who he’d become in the last year? Instead of staying home, living in a more challenging environment might have been good for him. Nevertheless, he still looked so small to me. It seemed like he was saying all of this because he didn’t yet understand how the world worked. He had overestimated his own strength.
“Do you really think you can help her like that?” I asked.
“I can.”
“I don’t think you can. Not yet,” I said honestly.
Arus scowled at me. He didn’t say yes or no. Hell, he looked like he was about to cry. Like he wanted to say, I’m strong enough. Why don’t you get it?
What was I to do? It didn’t seem like he was going to get out of the way. Just as I thought that, Eris stepped forward.
“I’ll see if that’s true or not.”
She seemed to agree that words weren’t enough.
I nodded, and she pulled her sword from her hip and brandished it at Arus. The killing intent radiating off of her was the real deal, and Arus turned paler by the moment. His whole body started trembling.
But even as the blood drained from his face, he didn’t run away. He unsheathed his own sword and took a fighting stance.
Arus faced his mother head-on.
“Can you protect her?” she asked succinctly.
“I will,” Arus answered.
Eris moved the very next instant. She drew her sword with incredible speed and slashed at Arus. Her speed and timing were such that I would have never been able to react in time.
Arus did. He managed to block her attack, but not entirely, and rolled to the ground.
Even as he fell, he swung his sword, aiming at Eris’s ankle.
Blood erupted from her ankle, but Arus had only grazed it. That wasn’t enough to stop his mother, and he’d lost his balance. She stepped toward Arus with her injured leg and brought her sword down on him.
I heard the sound of flesh being sliced, not the sound of her hitting Arus with the back of her sword. Blood splashed in the air and dripped at Eris’s feet. The spray of blood flew far enough to hit me in the face. It was the sound of something that couldn’t be undone. The sight of something that couldn’t be undone.
Arus was lost to me forever. I felt my throat tremble at that singular truth.
Except that wasn’t the case. In the next instant, Arus flew out from between Eris’s legs. Even as he bled from the top of one of his shoulders, he glared at Eris while baring his teeth. He battered his unabated fighting spirit against her.
“Gaaah!”
Eris went on the attack as though the blood flowing from her ankle meant nothing.
“Graaagh!”
Arus followed suit. The wound on his shoulder was a deep one, and his clothes were stained red with his blood, but he acted as though he had suffered no injury at all.
Eris’s swings were faster and heavier than his. Every time she swung her sword and Arus met it with his own, his whole body nearly went flying from the impact, causing him to stumble. At times he did fall back, at times he fell to the ground, and all the while, he picked up small wounds. He was kicked away and hit with the handle of Eris’s sword. Soon enough, he was covered in injuries.
But he wouldn’t go down. He always managed to just barely keep himself grounded, adjust his stance, and rush back toward Eris. Over and over again.
The difference in strength was overwhelming. After landing that one attack on her ankle at the start, Arus hadn’t managed to strike Eris even once. She had him completely locked down, but Arus still wouldn’t give up.
Was she struggling to put him down because he was her son? Was she holding back so she wouldn’t kill him? Maybe that was a small part of it, but that wasn’t all. It wasn’t as though Eris was the type of swordswoman who didn’t follow through.
Arus was already so wounded that he was hard to look at. He must’ve realized that he couldn’t beat Eris. But he refused to quit or admit defeat.
I could tell it was because he had to do this. He was trying to prove that when he said he would protect Aisha, he wasn’t lying.
Despite that, there were limits to what he could do.
“Urgh!”
I heard the sound of metal clashing, and Arus’s sword went spinning from his hand. It traveled through the air and landed at my feet.
At that moment, I was utterly horrified. It wasn’t just his sword that had flown through the air. His hand was still attached to it. And even after being cut from his body, it still gripped the hilt of the sword tightly.
“Ngh!”
I wanted to make them stop, to step in and tell them that this was enough. But I waited when I saw that Arus hadn’t given up. Even as he held the stump of his arm, he lowered his posture and moved to charge at Eris again.
His mother saw this and threw her sword to the ground. She was going to fight him hand to hand.
“Rrrgh!”
Arus roared into the air as he charged Eris. At this point, he didn’t have a plan. He was just going to rush at her with brute force.
Eris, on the other hand, was calm. She countered him with a fist to his head that sent him to the ground face up. She then straddled him. Using her knees, she locked Arus’s arm down and mounted him. Everything that came after was a sight I was more than familiar with.
“Gargh!”
She laid into Arus with her fists, and he had no recourse to fight back. Even then, he continued to scream into the air without giving up. Eris punched him. Over and over and over again. The dull sounds of her fists colliding with his flesh repeatedly echoed throughout the area.