-Eragon

Kim Moon was not a humble woman. She did not need to be - she had much to learn, it was true, but she had a great deal to be proud of. Kim was one of the most powerful Slayers for her age, one of the fastest learners, and perhaps the only Slayer in nearly three decades to slay an extraplanar creature. Weak though it was, infantile and freshly summoned, it only added to the honors bestowed upon her.

Unlike others, Kim Moon did not allow these honors and victories to weigh her down, burdened by accomplishment or growing overconfident by her successes. She only used them as motivation to know that she could do better. When Kim woke up every day, she spent a perhaps excessive time staring into the mirror. It was not vanity that drove this examination, nor was it any form of pride in her own appearance. No, nothing so superficial. Instead she saw only flaws.

Flaws in her bruises - wounds she would not have taken while training or fighting, had she been strong enough to beat an opponent more handily. Each moment spent under the care of her family's healers was a moment away from her training. Flaws in her blade - nicks, cuts, and stains left by blows it should not have taken. Each moment spent reforging and perfecting the metals in her enchanted blade was another second to punish herself in the heat of the forge, to sweat away her own imperfections as well. Flaws in herself were… well…

"You have done well, my daughter."

The voice of her father was enough to shake Kim from her battle trance, but only unwillingly. Gritting her teeth, she did her best to respectfully sheathe her blade and turn, bowing to her father as she did so.

"Your praise honors me, Father, but it is undeserved."

"I would think not. Most would rest after a war has been fought, but you have only increased your training."

"I would rather be prepared for the next conflict than scrambling to make myself so."

Silence hung between them, each evaluating the other. Kim held her slight bow, doing her best not to breathe too heavily, her pride not willing to show exhaustion over such a simple exercise. The Barrier encompassing her training room would have been covered in corpses were it not for the fleeting nature of these Barrier creatures, but even that was not enough. She had slain dozens of them, utilized every technique in her arsenal, and had been doing so for days, ever since the Cabal fell to their combined ****. She had improved, as she always had… and that was precisely the problem.

"You place too much pressure on yourself. It honors me that you dedicate yourself so, but you must rest in equal measure, or you will lose yourself to the blade. Slayers who have done so… they do not often return."

"I will not lose myself to the blade," Kim promised, the words a practiced ritual. "Only to my training and duties."

Silence hung for a moment longer. Kim wasn't sure how her father would respond - after sharing this exchange for so long, he often left shortly after, sensing the futility of further attempts to persuade his daughter to ease her efforts. Now, he stood stoically, glancing down with obvious concern.

"Kim, I-"

Kim was saved from his concerns by the melodic tune of a soft string instrument, humming with just enough volume to cause her father to stop mid-sentence. With only the barest trace of a blush, Kim deepened her bow.

"I apologize, Father. I was not anticipating a phone call at this hour."

"No, do not apologize. I welcome contacts from outside the clan. Finish your business - we can speak of this later."

Turning, her father was gone as quickly as he had appeared, the grace and speed of the Moon Clan aiding him in a hasty retreat. Kim sighed with relief when she thought he was out of earshot, hand immediately shooting to her phone.

"I don't recognize this number. Who are you, and why are you calling me?"

"Uh, hello to you too," the voice greeted. It struck a chord with Kim, but she didn't fully recognize it until the voice eventually continued. "It's John. John Newman… and I was calling to make a deal."

"A deal? That certainly sounds interesting, although this is hardly the time for it. Why have you contacted me so directly?"

"W-well," the voice on the other end stammered, suddenly losing confidence, "I don't really have a proper way to engage with you aside from direct contact. I'm still new to the Abyss, and apart from asking Moira for numbers and-"

"You are inexperienced and blunt," Kim emphasized, trying to leverage as much as she could over the young man across the phone, "I agree. Now, what did you want?"

There was a pause. For a moment Kim thought she had already subdued the man, and that perhaps he had even disconnected his own phone, defeated before even properly engaging her. A part of her, one that she hated, hoped she was wrong. If he had already disengaged, there was nothing to be won from this battle…

"What I want is something I think you want as well. Strength. Power. Growth at all costs, something as invaluable outside of war as in it."

Kim's eyebrows raised a fraction of an inch, and she was quite glad that this phone call was made without visual aid. Her composure returned a moment later as she smirked almost cockily into the phone, trying to emphasize that self-assuredness as she spoke.

"What would you have to offer me in terms of strength, John Newman?"

"You leveled up the last time we trained, Kim. I know it. That's one of the things my abilities tell me… Moira has leveled up numerous times without my help, but she's never done it in a day, much less an hour like we spent together. Tell me, for someone without my unique powers… what did that feel like?"

Kim fought back a growl as she snarled at the phone. What the young man said was true, in more ways than one. While Kim had never indulged in mundane curiosities and entertainment long enough to fully understand the term "level", the concept and the real feeling of doing so was not lost on her. Even against a few miniscule Barrier creatures, even in the brief time she had spent fighting alongside the young mage, Kim had noticed a dramatic increase in her own speed, endurance, and strength as a direct result of battling those gray-skinned dwarves.

"It felt like someone wasting my time," Kim lied immediately, "much like this phone call."

"I don't think you're telling the truth," John replied, his hesitance just as limited as her own.

"I don't care what you think. What I’m telling you is that I have no interest in your bargain."

"Your clan seems rather secretive, even to supposed allies," John began, pausing as he audibly sighed. "I can't expect that you'd disclose anything or offer any meaningful services to a complete stranger, it's true. So I'll make my offer, even if you don't want to hear it."

"I must admit, I'm surprised," Kim began, trying to keep the traces of delighted venom from her voice. "The Cabal sources we traced after the war did link back to you, true, but I never imagined consent could be as meaningless to you as they implied."

It was a lie, of course, but one Kim had prepared long ago. The Cabal's information had leaked to the public not long after their conquering, one of the many consequences of a war waged against someone holding compromising information. As with any valuable intel, the Moon Clan had been quick to snatch the cheapest and most thorough of details from those they had defeated as well as those who had escaped in the chaos, via the cheapest prices and methods available to them. That was the way that Kim had finally learned of John's supposed true abilities - his Purification that created Abyssal creatures from nothing more than Barrier imprints and his ability to sustain them far longer than was natural, even bringing them to the mortal plane.

But for all the lewd desires that John Newman had been implied to have, consent had never been a problem noted by any of his observers. If anything, he seemed almost sympathetic to the idea compared to some of the less honorable organizations the Moon Clan had fought before… which made him all the more **** to accusations of such. For a moment, Kim believed her strike had dug true, and when the line did not immediately disconnect, she opened her mouth to leverage that damage. But before she could strike at that newly exposed **** point, John's voice came over the line, as sure and determined as ever.

"Think what you will of me, it means nothing. I make my offer all the same. I know that you gained a great deal of strength when we trained together, irrespective of the time spent in each other's presence. That gain came as a direct result of being in my presence, under the guidance of my abilities. Even Moira, for all her training and dedication to becoming a worthy Warden, has not leveled up so fast without my help. You seem like an equally driven woman… if you want to grow as quickly as you did back then, you need my aid. Need it even more desperately than you need to breathe."

John spoke those last words as if he were sure of their effect, and it only infuriated Kim that he was so right. Gripping the hilt of her recently sheathed sword, Kim fought back all traces of anger as best as she could before responding. Pride was strong in Kim… but so, too, were her instincts. John Newman had only trained with her before because of convenience. To make an offer, to provide such services in exchange for something, he must have been offering a great deal more… and desiring an even greater trade.

"What exactly are you offering as terms for this trade of yours?" Kim asked, glaring into the touch screen of her phone as if she could twist John Newman's eyes from behind the safety of her device.

"I'm offering a chance to become stronger than even Moira, over the next… let's say week or so," John provided, with an almost audible shrug, "and in exchange…"

"I need a sword. A strong one. A Slayer's sword."

Kim hesitated. A Slayer's blade was something unique, forbidden to outsiders. Even if he had promised her immortality itself, even if she believed he could provide such a thing… there was no possible way she could offer such a blade from her clan's smiths. To do so would be to betray their very ideals and abandon her clan's foundations in favor of quick and easy power gains.

"I cannot do this, no matter what you offer me. To do so would be to betray our ideals, our culture, our very foundations."

"I thought you might say that… how about just a really good sword, then?"

Kim considered, though she hated to admit it. She thought of her clan's finest blacksmiths, their skills at forging powerful blades and attuning them to individual wielders. Then her mind wandered to the power John Newman had offered her for only an hour's time, compared it to the gains she had made in strength and speed over the prior week's harsh training.

"…What would you consider a 'good' sword?"

Though Kim couldn't see the man on the other end of the line, she could almost imagine it. Her voice had been too hopeful, too yielding to his demands. On the other end of that phone call, John Newman was grinning with maniacal glee as his bait was taken.

"Well, imagine how much you want yourself to improve. That's how good I want this sword to be."