He sat next to Lt. Honda, not out of any fondness, but because it was the front row of the hard plastic bleachers. This was his custom when attending his brothers' duels.
Though he doubted he could learn anything useful from seeing William get knocked flat and eviscerated within the span of five seconds.
...If it got to that point, he felt that he wouldn't be able to stop himself from interfering.
His brother walked out, as tall and severe as ever, a purposeful stride. He was no doubt already calculating how to make it as horrible as possible for Nova to watch. Irritating. The thought made him semi-consciously flex his claws.
William tapped out from the locker room a second later, small, clothed in white and blue.
Blood showed up so well on white and blue.
The thought of William dead was starting to make him feel sick.
It wasn't as though he could just get up and walk out. The thought of the look on Diurn's face if he interfered...
One of Diurn's attendants gave the signal for them to start.
And, for a moment, neither of them moved.
And then, something strange happened.
Diurn moved forward, a single step, his hand on the hilt of his blade. His entire body was tense with concentration.
And as he leaned forward, pulling his blade, William was flowing like water.
Nova had not even seen him take his running start, and yet already he had jumped almost straight up, legs crashing against neck, shoulders, head. This very clearly took Diurn by surprise, and he barely had time to react to it before William's cape had slung around, obscuring his vision. He staggered back, dropping his sword, trying to grab at William's legs, tearing through his slacks, but no blood flowed from his claws- this served as no deterrent, and though Nova had difficulty discerning the exact moment it happened, he realized William had unfastened his cape and wrapped it around Diurn's head; the older man was stumbling around, wailing curses, trying to shake him off. William, on the other hand, was almost eerily silent; if the claws digging into his thighs hurt at all, he did not show it. He quickly pulled his dagger and stabbed it through the cloth into Diurn's neck-- the older man cried out in pain, grabbed him by the arm, and finally managed to yank him from his body, throwing him nearly halfway across the length of the gym floor. William hit the ground with a roll and then immediately stood and launched himself back at him.
This all occurred in less than the space of a minute.
While Diurn was angrily tearing at the cape William had driven into him with his dagger, attempting to recover, William drew a sword that Nova recognized as his own, taken without notice from his room. He slid down low and slashed at his ankle, bringing him down to his knees- no, that was no good; he'd regenerate too quickly for that to be of any use- and indeed, he lunged out past William, grasping for the sword he'd let fall moments earlier. Even in this motion, William struck out at him again, sword glancing his side and a spray of blood soaking the front of his uniform.
There was something about the way he moved, fast and precise, like it was instinctual, that seemed wholly different from how William was. How Nova knew him to be.
When Diurn finally managed to rip the cape from his throat, William caught his dagger as it flew out towards him, leaping into the air- he seamlessly sheathed his sword, Nova's sword, tossing the dagger to his dominant hand- Nova realized at this point that he was intentionally aiming to scar his face because the tissue there was delicate and thin, more likely to suffer permanent damage.
Diurn caught him by the ankle, cracking sound, and made to fling him across the room again, and William instead braced his body as he was fully, bodily being slung, and stabbed him through the arm with the dagger he had in hand, and at this moment Nova fully realized that the man was flat out fucking feral.
It appeared that he had struck some sort of nerve; blood was flowing freely, and the way Diurn's hand loosened from his ankle did not seem voluntary.
Actually, Nova thought, from the very start of the match- less than two minutes before- William had forced Diurn into acting defensively. Not even Nova had managed this in his first match against him.
He felt a strange, surreal wave of shock, watching William clamber over his brother's body, securing himself by standing on the dagger driven into his arm and stabbing him in the face repeatedly with his short sword. All of it was regenerating quickly, but the rapidfire attacks were leaving Diurn little tiny to strategize; he couldn't even attempt to remove him. As he reached round his back to grab one of his own daggers, William kicked him square enough in the chest to cause an audible crack, to cause him to stumble back and lose his breath. The smaller heeled boots must've been steel-toed. This clicked in Nova's head; William had specifically asked if there were limitations on what he could wear. He had been strategizing.
Still, it must've been wearing on him, that he couldn't cause Diurn to scar. That was what made these duels so important in the first place; these had to be wounds of catastrophic quality.
He was flung off again, and did not rise immediately.
Had his ankle been broken earlier? Why hadn't the attendant called it?
Diurn took the blades from his body, and flung them away; they both ended up out of bounds, embedded in the wall. He was panting, soaked in blood he hadn't expected to spill; he finally gathered his own sword, and walked over to where William was laying.
He bent over him, to stab him, to end it, presumably; of course he hadn't ever intended to just scar William. That would've been too easy.
Instead of that happening, though, William kicked him below his knee and forced him down again. In the next instant, he was towering over him, had forced the lengthwise edge of the sword against his mouth, and was cutting past his lips, teeth; there was a popping sound, the cutting of flesh, and the sword had cut through his cheeks, dislodging his jaw, and William was pushing it further, angling it down.
" Is this deep enough to scar?" he asked. It was the first time he had spoken, or made any noise at all. His voice sounded the same as always. Cheerful and vaguely tired.
Diurn's eyes flicked down, and then back up, blazing with a deepset hatred. If it weren't for the still healing nerve damage to his dominant arm, Nova had no doubt he would've ran him through.
" You'll answer me, right? You don't seem like the type to choose dying over something so trivial. And I think it'd be in poor taste for me to kill a member of the royal family during peacetime."
He was still pushing the blade down, now more slowly. God. Never mind a permanent scar, he was going to decapitate him at that rate. There was a limit to how much even Starka could recover.
At last, the pain seemed to be too much for him. He shakily dropped the sword in his other hand, nodding.
William withdrew the blade, watching the blood cascade from Diurn's wrecked mouth, and there was silence for a moment. The injury didn't look as though it was healing.
The DASS side of the bleachers erupted into uproarious applause.
Lt. Honda stood, and she was the one who had the good sense to call in medics to retrieve William.
Nova did not know how to look at him. He very suddenly didn't want to look at him.
... He had killed one of his brothers in a duel such as this, and somehow, he found the strength of William's ferocity surprising. The intensity of it.
He suddenly felt that he was back at the first time he had laid eyes on him, and he couldn't understand William at all.
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