The familiar hallways of the academy appeared foreign to Manfred as he dashed down their length. They weren't supposed to be full of fallen weapons and the corpses of his peers. Neither were the floorboards supposed to be stained a splotchy red. The sight stabbed his heart with grief, but onward he ran.

Manfred hurried along a railed walkway overlooking the library, where Tom's two fellow instructors, brothers Jay and Trevor Martin fought off Innutukian invaders from advancing to a back area where several of the most amateur students sheltered. The academy's Raskan and Torlenian instructors respectively, they utilized their unique skillsets to retain even a chance of succeeding despite being vastly outnumbered. They clearly struggled, but due to their skills, so did the Innutukians.

Right when Manfred passed an open doorway leading to a flight of stairs, a feminine scream pierced his ear. He froze in place, head automatically snapping in the direction he'd heard it from, upstairs. Tightening his grip on his pole-axe, he charged up.

Manfred's weapon preceded him in rounding the corner. But once he fully entered the upper storage chamber, his mouth went agape. Backed by a quartet of Innutukian men-at-arms, Andre towered over a blonde woman who knelt on her knees before him and whimpered. A swollen red mark on her cheek in the shape of a hand told a painful story.

"Andre!" Manfred called out as he stepped out from behind a wooden crate, "What...what're you doing with these men? These invaders."

Andre's countenance had been hard when resting on the woman, but once he looked up at Manfred, it softened into remorse. "I'm only doing what I have to do."

"And what's that?"

"Sir Holt stored suits of Alcontean armor up here in the locked chamber. I have my orders."

Manfred frowned. "You intend to...take them?"

One of the Innutukian soldiers nodded stiffly under the weight of his bulky helmet. "We'll get that perfect middle ground between protection and mobility."

"Then...what's this girl have to do with it?"

"She admitted to having possession of the key, yet she refuses to give it up or tell me where it is." Andre replied, "Now please, don't step into this, because my duty's my duty."

"And my duty's mine." Manfred pointed his weapon's spike at the nearest Innutukian throat. "Get out. All of you."

With one swift movement, the Innutukian soldier knocked Manfred's point aside and booted him into the nearest wall. Manfred hit it with a grunt, his whole lungful of air leaping out of his mouth at once. He blocked an incoming strike from another foe who wielded a pole-axe of his own, distinctly Monteraynian in design. Then he returned his own and bashed the Innutukian's face in.

When the first Innutukian came in to strike again, Manfred thrusted the point into his thigh. He dropped to the floor with a cry, exposing his unarmored back. Manfred buried the axe blade in his spine.

A third Innutukian lunged at Manfred, and before he could react, they were both already on the floor, a tangled mass of limbs, armor, and a dagger. Having dropped his pole-axe, all Manfred could do was struggle to keep the blade from his flesh.

Then rang out the sound of a sword leaving its scabbard, and a guttural cry followed. Next, thumping footsteps drawing closer to Manfred and his opponent. Suddenly, the Innutukian atop Manfred screamed and went limp, and he fell away to reveal none other than Andre standing over the two with a bloodied blade in his right hand.

Andre extended his left to help Manfred up. They stared silently into one another's eyes for quite some time, both searching for answers to amorphous questions bubbling in their minds. Manfred gulped.

"Thanks." he croaked, "I...it's good to see you again. Not the circumstances, you know, but—"

"I admit to deriving some sort of pleasure from this meeting myself." Andre said in a cold tone, "But if I'm to keep my head on these shoulders, I have to ignore that and focus on the task at hand."

Manfred took a step back to block Andre's access to the blonde woman who had risen to her feet by now. "I don't know what's going on, Andre. But whatever you're being told to do...don't listen! Come back!"

"It's too late for me. I was forced to swear my allegiance to their emperor in order to keep my life."

"But...we're your people. Monterayne will keep you safe!"

Andre tilted his head. "Will she? Or I live out the rest of my days under a shadow of scorn, the son of a traitor? And even if I am accepted back, Innutuk won't rest until they eliminate the man who dared go back on a promise. Either way, I'm a traitor to somebody."

"Andre..."

"Spare me the sentiment!" Andre snapped, "All I need to do is retrieve some armor and leave. Don't make this harder than it has to be."

A gleaming object in the corner of Manfred's eye briefly caught his attention. He glanced down to see a longsword in pristine condition being handed to him by the blonde student, and after a moment's hesitation, he took it.

"I don't want to hurt you, Andre." Manfred said as he weighed the sword in his hands, "But I also can't allow you to do that."

"I don't need your allowance."

Andre stepped forward with a swing of his sword, clearly to force Manfred to step backward. But instead, Manfred blocked the blow and used the connection between their blades to push Andre back even farther. A followup strike forced him to retreat yet again.

With a huff, Andre lunged forward with another powerful strike. Manfred deflected, but at the cost of losing some of his ground. Andre continued pressing the attack with a series of swift strokes that absorbed all of Manfred's attention. He found himself cycling through his entire arsenal of guard positions in rapid succession in order to block and parry each of Andre's incoming blows.

Manfred dodged one incoming attack by ducking, and while crouched, he thrusted at Andre's belly. Only by leaping back did Andre avoid the incoming stab, exactly Manfred's intention. Manfred utilized a trio of powerful blows to drive his old friend into a corner between crates.

"If we continue this any longer, somebody's going to regret it." Manfred pleaded once Andre had been cornered, "Please—"

The only reply Andre gave was a boot to the belly. Manfred stumbled back coughing, allowing Andre to leap out of the trap and dash to the locked storage chamber again. He studied the door for a second before lifting his sword and stabbing it into the wood near the upper hinge. His first attempt only dented the door slightly, so he drew back to try again.

Manfred bounded across the room and smacked Andre's blade aside. Forced to engage in combat again, Andre easily fell back into his masterful assault and drove Manfred away from the door. Though Manfred's body underwent the motions to defend himself, he felt his thoughts absorb into his mind, a numb sense of surrealism setting in at the thought of officially being set at war with his former friend.

Manfred attempted a twisting maneuver to wrest Andre's sword from his grasp. But Andre only used the momentum to whip around and swing the tip of his blade right by Manfred's face. He leaned back just long enough to evade before rushing around Andre to block off the door. Then Manfred took the offensive to push him even farther away.

The two continued battling back and forth across the storage room, the blonde captive already long gone. Reversals upon reversals rendered the fight unpredictable, keeping Manfred and Andre both on their toes the entire time. Whenever one of them made the slightest mistake, the other took advantage and exploited the opening. Miraculously, neither of them had hit the other yet, but that threat still existed.

"Andre, why won't you listen to me?" Manfred cried over the repeated clang of their swords meeting, "I'm sure Princess Kate would gladly see to it that you're kept safe from retaliation! Please...don't throw your life away just because—"

"Because what?" Andre demanded, ducking underneath a horizontal stroke of Manfred's sword, "Because I swore allegiance to the largest and most powerful empire known to man? That sounds like a big reason to me."

"Listen, I know things have been hard." Manfred batted Andre's sword away and immediately used the point of his own blade to hold him at bay. "Crazy, really. But do you really want to ally yourself with those men? They're murderers and thieves of others' land!"

Andre gritted his teeth. He pushed Manfred's blade aside and lunged forward to close the distance between them. "At what point did I say I wanted any of this? I didn't ask for my father to die, and I didn't ask to be cast out! Neither did I ask to be forced to give my word to that emperor. Your begging's pointless, Manfred. Life plays cruel tricks, and all the more so on me."

"I can understand it's hard. But that doesn't give you the right to give up."

"You call this giving up?" Andre demanded as he swung a powerful diagonal blow at Manfred's ribs.

Manfred blocked, but only at the cost of his balance. He stumbled into one of the boxes on the floor, and with the pressure of deflecting another attack, he tripped over it. Manfred dropped to the floor, watching helplessly as his longsword clattered out of reach. The tip of Andre's blade hovered over his throat.

Several seconds of intense eye contact followed. Manfred's chest heaved up and down as he anticipated the worst. Andre stared back with a blank expression seeming to be only a veil over inner turmoil. Manfred couldn't imagine what thoughts swirled through his old friend's head, but whatever they were, there was conflict to be seen on his face.

Finally, Andre withdrew, taking a few controlled steps over to where Manfred's sword lay. After sheathing his own sword, he picked it up. "So long as you stay there, Manfred, nothing will happen to you. You don't deserve to have your life snatched away from you. There's no reason for you to suffer my fate."

Manfred opened his lips to speak, but no words came to mind. Then again, with how dry his throat was and how his tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth, he doubted he would be able to verbalize any thoughts even if he had them. He only stared at Andre with moistening eyes.

"Now, I have a mission to accomplish here, after which I'll be gone. This is goodbye, forever."

Once again, Manfred had nothing to say. He could only watch as Andre broke the door down to the storage chamber, snapping the blonde woman's longsword in half in the process. Then he pulled a cart out from the room he'd broken into and retrieved four suits of armor. He wheeled it past Manfred and headed to the exit. After exchanging one last regretful glance, Andre disappeared from Manfred's view.

**** 

A/N: Well, I'll bet that was one confrontation we all saw coming, but found difficult to read regardless. But Andre being the more unstable element in that encounter, I do wonder, did he surprise you in any way here? Or did he behave much like you would have expected? 

Speaking of which, how about you behave like I'd expect and hit that vote button and leave some comments? It's always much appreciated, and as much as I joke about it, I really do appreciate each and every one of you who takes time out of your day/night to read my work and hopefully glean some enjoyment out of it, so thank you. 

We have one short chapter to wrap this book up, so I shall post that shortly. See you there, hopefully!