"Aliostar." Renold's voice was relatively low - which still put it significantly above speaking-volume of smaller beings - and his gaze averted when he spoke that one word, followed by a hesitant pause. The dragon seemed suddenly sad, and somehow the tone of his voice only served to stress just how heavy a secret he was revealing. "The expert I am taking you to; his name is Aliostar. He is a dragon like me... although saying 'like me' might be more than a little misleading in this case. I've known him from when he was just a hatchling; we were nestmates, once. He is more than three centuries younger than me, but he is a Red and by far the larger of us. Last time I saw him he was also driven completely mad with hatred for you little ones, and tried to kill me. He was smaller than me, back then, yet I would have died if I had been alone."
"What makes you think he won't just devour us immediately if we go to him for help?" Gerald asked, quite confident that Jillian was thinking something similar.
"This was more than a thousand years ago," the Green clarified. "Dragons never forget the past, but our perspective on it may change as we accumulate more of it. Aliostar was defeated back then and was forced to go into hiding, but I have been keeping an eye on him, which is why I know where he is. He hasn't touched any little ones in centuries, and to be frank I don't think he has strength left for evil plots anymore. His wounds from that day never fully healed; even if he proves hostile, I think you would be able to at the very least escape his wrath with your lives intact."
The elder sighed. "But the reason approaching him is worth this risk is that he was - and still is - a master summoner, with immense knowledge of demonkind and the flow of energy between the planes. If anyone can locate the source of a demonic plague, it is him."

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[I]Is he trying to duck below my kick?[/I] Fixer thought curiously when he noticed Ixion's form start to lower itself from his previous stance. [I]Surely he must realize that he can't do that as long as I'm locking his arm in place. Best case scenario for him would be that instead of breaking his ribs I would break his arm, which would definitely not serve to even the odds between us. Besides, he's moving too slowly to get out of the way in time, even if I hadn't been holding him in place; my leg has already started accelerating and is gaining speed and power fast, whereas he only just started and, without anything to anchor his feet on, can at the very most accelerate downward as fast as gravity allows. He fails yet again.[/I]
But no, that was not it, the dark agent realized the next instant, when he noticed the gray eyes behind the assassin's mask having locked with his own violet ones. [I]What is he doing?[/I] He looked down, almost on a whim, and immediately recognized the way the other's legs were bending, not in an effort to crouch, but storing energy for a jump. [I]He intends to jump over my kick? That is even more ludicrous than ducking below it... or does he intend to attack? Has he not even noticed that I am about to kick him in a way that will seriously injure him, or does he think that he can hit me before it hits? Impossible, this is a kick that takes about a second to execute; he will barely even have time to think before I've already knocked him to the ground. No one moves [/I]that[I] fast; even aided by Art of the Warden, no one but me would have a mind able to keep up with that kind of movement.[/I]
And then, suddenly, the scene had changed. Even Fixer, who prided himself greatly in his nearly unparalleled speed of thought, took a moment to fully comprehend what had just happened. [I]He teleported us? I didn't think he would bother teleporting, since he couldn't do so without bringing me with him.[/I]
Another instant, and his perception caught on to the fact that there was nothing under his right foot anymore. [I]We're in mid-air?[/I] This was bad; he could already feel himself being pulled downward by gravity. But he did not worry too much about that, since he figured that Ixion would not risk his own life and health just to win this little show of theirs, so as long as he held on to the man he knew that any fall he suffered, Ixion would suffer as well.

Confident though he had been up to that point, there was no hiding Fixer's surprise when Ixion abruptly extended his legs and actually moved through the air as though he had a foothold. Another instant, and Fixer noticed the wooden beam the other had been sitting on and pushed himself off.
[I]How?[/I] he thought with widening eyes, his heart beating for the first time during this entire maneuver, but in a way that suggested that its rate would soon be quickening. [I]How could he teleport us somewhere so specific? Wait... he teleported here before, when he fought Blue. Did he remember the mental image from then accurately enough to recall it perfectly in an instant? And in a way that put me in mid-air, and him with a foothold... what is this man?[/I] A long time ago, before he had become the Grim Tool and had still been number three, Fixer had very quickly been pegged as one of the top candidates for training as one of the superior tools, the Kirkinian ones or the ones serving the Rodorian king directly, due to his almost superhumanly fast thought-process and reflexes. The sheer quickness of his mind was his greatest strength, and the reason he had never lost a fight before and had not suffered even a minor injury in years. But this... could Ixion think even faster? Impossible! No mind worked [I]that[/I] fast!
Luckily it seemed Ixion, while he definitely proved a lot more capable than Fixer had expected, continued to underestimate his opponent. Rather than staying on the beam and simply letting Fixer fall, which might have broken the violet-eyed man's grip on his wrist and enabled him to move freely again, he jumped off. Judging by the arc he used Fixer to draw, he figured Ixion was planning to kick him in the back...
Which might have worked, if he had not used Fixer himself as the anchor to maneuver around. All it took was for the fighter to lock his right shoulder and arm in place, and Ixion's movement would draw Fixer with him so that he kept facing his opponent, and stayed nearly as parallel with him in the air as he had been on the ground. This meant two things: that they both ended up at an angle that was closer to upside-down than horizontal in the air, and that Fixer's kick from before still hit. The aim had been thrown off by the maneuver, landing the blow in the side of Ixion's midsection instead of his ribcage, and it did not hit as hard as it originally would have, considering that he had no connection to the ground and no way to stop himself from being pushed back by the force of the kick as well - which was why aerial attacks, while flashy, were rarely practical - but it hit, and with any luck would at least stun the other.

As they started falling Fixer then threw his idle right leg and pelvis forward, not in an attempt to kick Ixion but to add to the rotation he had already started by leaping off the beam, hopefully enough so that if they really fell to the ground, Ixion would be the bottommost of the two and absorb the impact.