“They told me you were coming, The Prison Guard alerted everyone.” The Dancer said once The Prisoner had approached.
“You could rule your own island, as I do, or is it The Ladder you climb?”
They stood there in the heat for several seconds in silence before The Prisoner reached for his sword, the blade catching the light as he drew it.
“So be it then, have you danced before?” She asked pulling out several flechettes from the folds of her clothing.
“Well allow me to give you a lesson.”
She jumped, flipping backwards then landing on her feet with a machine like precision and a feline agility, the flechettes now sitting delicately between her fingers.
“Go on, you can take her.” The Observer reassured before The Prisoner engaged.
He blinked across the short distance before delivering a slash to test The Dancer’s reactions. With a series of movements he couldn’t fully read, she’d somehow deflected the first slash with a kick of her legs, the second she’d span and somehow evaded the strike completely before throwing a handful of the flechettes. The Prisoner nullified the projectiles with a single, perfectly timed wide sweep of his blade before closing the distance and going offensive again. As he’d got closer, The Dancer pulled out a short blade and had used it to counter the first attack before spinning and attempting to land a counter strike. He’d blocked the strike before countering to which was met with a spinning counter by The Dancer then followed up with his own counter again in an intricate dance of functional defences. The Dancer relied heavily on her perfectly timed and executed spins, her strikes were accurate but not as strong as they could or should have been. After deflecting a downward slash with her kicking technique, she’d span then delivered a perfectly executed back kick to the chest. The counter strike sent The Prisoner flying onto his back along with the wind knocked out of him and the sword from his hand. The Dancer had closed the distance and jumped onto his chest, standing on her toes she’d span, then span again before dropping her weight then coming back up as she danced on his chest. The weight of the woman had never felt so real, so painful yet she span once more before leaping backwards off of him to land on her feet. The shock sent stars to his eyes for a moment as the pain dissipated. He wasted no time launching a follow up, leaping back to his feet he grabbed his sword again and went at her with a spinning slash. Her reactions had been perfect as she’d somehow jumped splitting her legs like some sort of gymnastic move then thrown several flechettes at The Prisoners back. He’d realised what she’d done and had turned in time for his blade to meet the incoming projectiles. What had happened next The Prisoner couldn’t have repeated if he tried, but he’d acted on a whim at it’d worked. He’d gone to throw his sword at The Dancer, but the spinning blade had been met with one of The Dancer’s flechettes that stopped its travel and left if spinning in the air for a split second. In that brief moment, the flachette that stopped the blade was left spinning as the two deflected one another. At that point, The Dancer’s flechette was closer to him, so he’d darted forward, grabbed it, span as he lowered his centre of gravity then thrown the projectile as he exited the spin. The flechette cut through the air perfectly and The Dancer hadn’t seen a thing until it was too late. The flachette hit her directly in the face smashing her glasses in two and landing in between her eyes right at the moment when his sword hit the ground. She’d dropped the remaining flechettes in her hands, her body suddenly losing its energy.
“A good dance.” She’d muttered.
“You dance well, nameless Prisoner.”
She’d fallen onto her back before a shallow pool of blood formed around her.
“You did it.” The Observer said.
“Come on, let’s keep going.”
There had been a long rocky path that wound through the air upwards toward the next island like the marked path of a candy wrapper caught in an updraught. Climbing higher, the heat of The Dancer’s island waned as if the sun had set over the desert as he moved on higher to places unknown.
“The prison guard known as the mirror waits up ahead.” The Observer said.
“Apparently he can send prisoners back to their cells just by showing them the reflections of themselves, but we’ll see, won’t we?”

CONTINUED IN EPISODE 4