Four Inches

Fate instinctively used his Manifest Power, slipping out of Bosina's grasp and falling to the floor. He jumped back, heart hammering as he stared down the Incarnation like a zebra caught in the hunt of a lion.

He swallowed hard, stepping back several times and straightening as he extended his hand, his Manifest Miao Dao flying from the ground and back into his palm. He took another ready stance, his face perfectly calm despite the intense fear warring inside him. The Advanced always punished showings of fear, no matter how small.

"Intangibility?" Lord Bosina laughed loud and hard, wiping a tear from his eye after he got ahold of himself. "That's what's made you so confident? Well, let's see how you fare without it, shall we?"

Instantly, Fate's fear grew, shakily exiting his intangible form with the omnipresent thought that he would fall. He would fall straight through the ground, down to the planet's core, and burn up in the heat. He tried to push those thoughts to the side, but they kept coming back like tides on a beach.

He knew better than most that fear was rarely logical or rational. At least now he had a good idea of what Bosina's Manifestation was, although that filled him with even more dread.

Bosina, noticing the glimmer of recognition in Fate's eye, raised his eyebrows. "Impressive," he said, surprisingly sincere. "You already figured it out. Usually, the Fear keeps people from thinking about it. But no matter, you'll die just the same."

Fate's fear expanded once more. Suddenly he dropped his Miao Dao, his irritation at himself for throwing away his greatest offensive tool overshadowed by the fear of disappointing Master Geifong and wounding himself.

In the three days leading up to this meeting, Fate had spent every moment in the Dilation Chamber, where he bested each of the bot's weapons one hundred times in a row each, completing the first phase of his training in less than a month within, or twelve minutes outside.

Master Geifong had beamed with pride, declaring to all within earshot that his pupil would end this war with naught but the blade in his hand. He then promptly threw Lu Gao in the chamber with Fate, along with another bed and weapon rack, where they spent the remainder of the three days battling each other with only their swords.

Fate spent the first three weeks getting utterly thrashed by Lu Gao, winning once for every five hundred battles they fought, but he quickly improved afterward, starting to get a win for every two hundred sparring sessions, then for every fifty, until Fate was winning once for every three battles.

When they got to this point, Lu Gao bowed out, and Master Geifong sent in a new pupil, with different habits and a slightly different fighting style.

During this time, Fate had learned to subsist off of Divine Energy so he required less food. He siphoned off the energy just a tad bit faster than it could regenerate, so he still needed food once every two days, and that was with not using Divine Energy for anything else except sustaining himself.

That still boiled down to about fourteen years' worth of meals (since he only needed to eat for around half the days in a year) that Venlanz had to provide for him within three days.

So, the cycle went, for almost thirty entire years within the Dilation Chamber, until Fate had bested every opponent thrown at him five hundred times in a row. It was no understatement to say that Fate was now superior to each of Geifong's pupils.

His last bouts within the Dilation Chamber before this meeting were spent sparring with Geifong himself, and Fate was proud to say that he had bested his Master once for every three losses. This was why he now appeared to have just entered his thirties, and why Lord Bosina read Fate's age as within the start of his fifties.

Needless to say, Fate was damn good with a sword now, at a significant cost to Venlanz. So suddenly fearing the weapon he had trained with for thirty years, feeling inadequate, that he was nothing more than a bumbling fool aiming to cut off his own hands, that the tireless toiling of Queen Dinan's servants to bring him food was wasted, was one of the worst feelings he had ever felt.

And that feeling brought forth a new one, one of unyielding rage that pushed his fear to the side. It was still present, but no more than a nagging feeling in the hidden recesses of his mind.

He charged toward the frowning Bosina, fists raised as he let out a roar. But before he could get more than ten feet from the ruler of the Fractured, he froze, the fear cannibalizing his anger and becoming his dominant thought once more. The anger tried to resurface when he saw Bosina's smug smirk and mocking gaze, but his fear snuffed it out like a candle in a storm.

"You truly are quite experienced in facing your fears," Lord Bosina said, a touch of admiration audible in his words. "No doubt you've gone through quite a lot despite your young age. You know what? You've earned my acknowledgment, so from one warrior to another, I'll give your people a chance.

"I won't fight back with anything except my Manifest Power. If you can score even a single hit on me within the next hour, I will negotiate sincerely with your queen for peace between our two countries."

Fate gritted his teeth, the hatred of Bosina's sheer arrogance allowing him to fight through his fear and take another step forward. As he did so, the dread seemed to double, every cell of his body screaming at him that only death awaited if he took just another step forward.

"Just be glad I'm too lazy to overload your brain and pop your head like a melon. Gives me a headache, and I'm still fighting off the one I got from that whelp who didn't know his place."

Fate tried to get angry again at that statement, but it seemed his brain was entirely focused on creating the chemicals that made him too afraid to even move.

He clenched his teeth, the pain distracting him a small amount and letting him move his foot off the floor. He moved it as far forward as he could before the fear forced his foot down, body shaking like a leaf and drenched in sweat.

Gradually, agonizingly, painfully slowly, he turned his gaze from Bosina to his foot, his instincts jerking his gaze back to the predator in his midst a fraction of a second later. But while his eyes were down, he saw how far he had advanced.

He had moved forward four inches.

Hope and satisfaction blipped in his mind for a nanosecond, before being swallowed by his terror. If he could move forward four inches, he could move forward four more. He didn't shirk from thirty years of loss after loss, he didn't cower the entire time the Advanced performed their awful experiments on him.

He conquered those, and he would conquer this.