Alex drank the water Zara handed him, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and held the cup back out to her without looking.
"Give me the Amethyst Paradox."
Zara raised an eyebrow but went to fetch it anyway, returning a moment later with the weapon cradled across both arms like it might bite her. It looked like it wanted to.
A curved blade, crimson and gold, its edge swept back in a wicked hook, the metal catching the light and throwing it back in a dull, almost oily sheen.
A length of chain trailed from the base of it, ending in what looked, at a glance, like nothing more than a simple ring. Alex knew better. He’d read the notes on this one twice before he’d ever touched it.
’A ring that isn’t a ring,’ he thought, taking the weapon from her, feeling the weight settle unevenly in his grip, blade-heavy on one end, chain-heavy on the other. ’Hidden spikes, waiting for a command. This thing is a liar by design.’
He looped the chain twice around his forearm, cinching it down until the working length between his hand and the blade had shrunk to something closer to a long dagger than a scythe, the metal links cool and slightly rough against his skin as he pulled them snug.
’Short range first,’ he thought, testing the new balance with a small turn of his wrist. ’Get a feel for it as a hook-blade before I even think about the chain doing anything interesting.’
He stepped up to the training dummy, close enough now that the reach barely mattered, and gripped the handle with both hands, feeling the odd, off-center weight settle into something manageable once his fingers found the right spacing along the grip.
The first strike came straight down, a clean overhead swing that bit into the dummy’s shoulder with a solid thunk, the impact traveling back up through his wrists in a way the straight blades hadn’t quite prepared him for.
He reset, adjusted his footing, and swung horizontal this time, the curved edge dragging sideways across the dummy’s chest in a wide, hungry arc, the hook at the tip catching for just a fraction of a second before releasing.
Then diagonal, top-left to bottom-right, the hook of the blade catching and pulling as it went instead of simply cutting through, the whole motion feeling less like a slash and more like something trying to hook its claws into meat and drag it off the bone.
Reverse diagonal next, bottom-right sweeping up and across, the chain along his forearm shifting slightly with the change in direction, a small tug he hadn’t fully accounted for until it happened.
Then a rising strike, blade traveling up from waist height into an imagined throat, the hook snagging on nothing but still telling him exactly how it would snag on something, the sensation oddly satisfying in a way he didn’t examine too closely.
’This is what a curved blade wants to do,’ Alex thought, running the angles again, faster now. ’It doesn’t want to cut clean through like a straight blade. It wants to catch. It wants to pull. Every angle I throw at it, it’s asking the same question, what am I hooking onto this time?’
By the tenth repetition his shoulders had found the rhythm of it, the hook-and-drag motion starting to feel less like something he was forcing and more like something the weapon was doing through him, his wrists loosening into a give-and-take with the blade’s own weight rather than fighting it outright.
He unwound the chain from his forearm, took several steps back from the dummy, and let the working length grow again, the chain sliding free link by link until it pooled loosely in his free hand, cool and heavier than it looked, the faint clink of metal against metal the only sound in the pause before he set up his next attempt.
"Little farther now," he muttered to himself, mostly to keep count of what he was doing rather than to inform anyone.
He held the scythe one-handed, aimed, and released it with a short swing of his arm.
The blade sailed the distance and struck the dummy square in the chest with a crack loud enough that a couple of recruits two posts down turned their heads, one of them nudging the other before both went quickly back to their own drills.
Alex yanked the chain back with a sharp pull of his wrist, and the scythe came whipping back through the air, straight into his waiting grip, the return landing with far less grace than the throw but landing all the same.
’Okay. That worked. Let’s see if it keeps working when I’m not standing directly in front of the thing.’
He shifted to the side, angled his body a quarter turn from the dummy, and threw again, this time from the flank, the blade curving in slightly off-line before finding its mark anyway, the hook catching the edge of the dummy’s arm.
He yanked it back.
He tried it crouched low, throwing up and out, the unfamiliar angle making the chain hiss faintly against the ground as it uncoiled, dust kicking up faintly around his knees with the shift in stance.
He tried it from a half-turn behind his own shoulder, whipping the blade around in a motion that felt more like a discus throw than a weapon strike, his balance wavering for a moment before catching itself.
Each throw landed a little differently, the chain forgiving mistakes that a straight blade never would have, absorbing the small errors in angle and timing that would have sent a thrown dagger wide.
’Alright,’ Alex thought, letting the scythe rest in his hand for a moment, chest rising and falling a little harder now, sweat beading faintly at his temple despite the mild morning air. ’Short chain’s solid. Time to actually use the reach this thing is supposed to be famous for.’