Oh, it connects. He hits the ground so hard it actually settles a good deal of the dust cloud, by virtue of some kind of complicated downward momentum equation. He's also laughing like a maniac. Some of it's more like coughing. The dust, you know.

Is that so. Then she's absolutely going to press the advantage, Raging Quadruple Blow into Raging Thrust into Chain Crush Combo, consuming a Spirit Sphere to make herself momentarily faster and stronger—

(He is going to need to do something because she can and will in fact just keep going until he's down otherwise.)

Eventually he slaps the ground and laughs "Mother, mother! You win!"

She stops mid-blow as soon as he slaps the ground (before she finishes her Chain Crush Combo) and steps back, light on the balls of her feet. Then she steps back forward and offers him a hand up.

He takes the hand and clambers to his feet. He's moving in a way that indicates at least one broken bone, but probably one of the fiddly little ones nobody cares about.

"Knew you were good, but damn, you're good."

...she smiles. "What did you do?" she asks, finally bothering to look at her shoulder to check how bad that was.

No worse than a decently enchanted ordinary sword that happened to ignore the stopping power of solid bone. Fortunately, this means it didn't fuck up her bones or ligaments, because they're untouched.

"Mm. First of all, I'd like to disclaim that nothing I'm about to say is true, because truth and falsehood are lies humans tell about a fundamentally nonsensical illusion called 'reality'. But the convenient thing about that is that you don't actually have to tell the same lies as anyone else. Of course, there's more of them, so they're more convincing. But if you're good enough at lying, you can convince the world that up is down. And I can literally do that."

"You said words but they didn't mean anything," she says, as she sits down cross-legged and starts meditating on regenerating faster.

"I did warn you. I don't think it can actually be explained in a way that makes sense to anyone who isn't temperamentally suited to doing it, anyway."

He gets tired of the feeling of bone scraping bone, and heals himself.

...sure.

Well, she's found a counter to him. And... "What would you do next time, to win against me?"

"Mm. How'd you see me through the dust?"

"Your spiritual signature. And your sword's. They were... almost as bright as the spirit's, from yesterday. Different. Opposite. But bright."

"Huh. That doesn't sound like something I want to fix, let alone something I can, so probably harrying you from cover isn't the game. ...I wasn't that badly hurt by the end, but it was hard to concentrate with you hitting me like that. Which I imagine was the idea. Still, I could've probably focused enough to get a blade back in my hand and stabbed you in the gut."

"Unless you can move much faster than you've demonstrated, I would have dodged it. ...or I could have dodged it. What would you do next?"

"An enemy who's dodging is an enemy who isn't beating me senseless. I'd have probably invoked the Hammer-Strikes-Smoke Mantra... dunno how well that'd work on you, but it's like the sword's bit backwards. Not being a thing-that-can-be-struck. Maintaining it isn't easy, I don't usually bother unless something seems like it stands a chance of really fucking me up."

"And how does that make you win?"

"Interesting question. I suppose it doesn't, but it puts me in a better position, doesn't it?"

She shakes her head. "Yes. But. Choices are only good if you can use them to win. It didn't..." Words. How do those work. Come on, Annika, you can do this, believe in yourself. "It didn't look like you were taking actions that would cause you to win. Just actions that would make winning easier. There is a difference." Although putting it this way feels like she's placing the cart ahead of the peco peco. How would Fist Keera put it? She will try to come up with something better.

"I think you might be right," he muses. "I don't do enough winning. I succeed, but it's because I'm very bad at losing. And... what was it that Beuriman liked to say, the undefeated swordsman must be exceptionally poor."

She nods along with that. It's not exactly something any of the Fists have said but it rhymes with their philosophy. "Every movement, in service of your goal. Every cut, in service of your goal. Every parry, in service of your goal. Every step, every breath, every choice, every thought, in service of your goal. That is the way of the monk. ...you're not a monk, but..." If she didn't think that was a good philosophy she wouldn't have become a monk, now, would she? And she understands that not everyone should be a monk but she does think that everyone should have that philosophy.

Taharqi has that philosophy, for all that he's a nightmare to spar with and acts all twisty and she can't see how he chooses what to do; he still does win, too reliably for it to be just luck.

"...maybe I should find a teacher. Not for the True Art, I don't think there are teachers for that, but - for winning."

"'The True Art'. Is that how you call the thing where you don't exist?"

"I call it a lot of things. I don't think it has a name, strictly speaking, but - the True Art is lying to the very bones of Ymir."

That has a nice ring to it, she has to admit.

She hops to her feet and starts summoning her Spirit Spheres again. "Again, now trying to win."

Taharqi wakes up reasonably early the next morning. He thanks their hosts, who thank him right back, profusely, for dealing with the thing that was stealing their dead. He feels bad taking credit for that since that was not at all mentioned by the bounty they'd been chasing but Arik did do it for that reason so he deserves those thanks.

And then they're ready to go. "So, Annika is probably going back to the Abbey for more training, but we should get you set up with a Kafra subscription and resurrection point, and then maybe I can drop you off at Geffen and introduce you to my friend? I'm probably gonna spend a while there, too, I haven't seen him in months."