The freedom to move freely, to use my ability to fly, gave an extra dimensionality to the fight that the tunnels lacked. Our battle was less a two-dimensional linear challenge now and more three-dimensional strategic maneuvering.

Storm was able to enter the torc, no matter her location in the outside world, so she translocated inside soon after Daniel and I. It was a function of the artifact that made me believe that they had initially created it for a Beast Tamer. I had asked her not to interfere unless Daniel released his bonded. She sent an emotional pulse of acceptance, one tinted with her agreement. She would maintain her distance, content to observe, for now.

The male Roc, Pluton, soon joined her, both of them watching and waiting.

I understood the nuance of the emotion I was receiving across our bond. She would wait, but it frustrated her with me. She remembered Daniel and how close we came to being really hurt the last time we had met.

Her worry might be justified if I hadn't realized my request was idiocy. It would be appropriate if I had any intention of fighting fair.

I didn't.

There was no fairness involved in a fight of this type. This was a life-or-death battle, a battle instigated by Daniel when he had ambushed me. One that I was determined to win. Fairness and equitable rules of combat were confined to duels and tournaments. This was beyond that.

Storm screeched her approval as she divined my intention, diving towards Daniel with all the release of fear and fury that she had been forced to endure these past weeks as I fought to free myself.

Talons extended. She managed a raking attack that shredded his back, further proof of how badly he had trained his perception skills. He should have noticed her actions long before they came near, and even if he couldn't defend against them, he could have dodged and moved to avoid them.

He had waited. Set his ambush to attack and kill me. Boasted about how cunning his family was. And how powerful.

But he hadn't bothered to equip a set of armor that would protect him from Storm's claws? Maybe he could be excused that idiocy because he believed we would be fighting in a tunnel system that Storm couldn't enter. Maybe he could be excused his decision to dodge if he believed this all an illusion.

But excuses wouldn't change the outcome. And whatever the reason, I would take advantage of his mistakes.

Daniel was able to react too late.

With Storm entering the fight, his actions became frantic. He may have tried to avoid summoning his bonded companions, but Storm had forced his hand. His flying snake-like companion that had been seriously injured at the end of our last meeting materialized. Divining its circumstances as it took shape in the air between us, it immediately targeted and attacked Storm.

It was the only animal he summoned, and as I had guessed, he hadn't had the time to find or train new bonded beasts to replace those that had died. With only one bonded animal to defend and attack, his abilities were severely limited. He was like a caged bird whose wings had been clipped.

Unable to fly. Unable to maximize his true potential.

He had been an idiot to attack me before he had healed completely and restored his stable of beast companions. Even without my recent advances, the isolation of being trapped had made to my affinities and cultivation. My cultivation tier had advanced to the Qi Gathering Realm weeks before. The pressure to free myself had been an incentive, a driving imperative for survival that had driven me beyond my limits and had paid off.

He may have reached the Qi Gathering Realm before I had, but the damage to his inner sea, his meridians, and his psyche with the death of his bonded had been more than debilitating. He had suffered from a Qi deviation that had left him raw and exposed. Those wounds were too fresh, and his cultivation still charred from the searing fire required to heal him quickly. The artifact his family had used would have come at a cost.

His bonded companion wasn't in much better shape. I had badly wounded it in our last encounter, and by forcing it to engage in this new round of combat, he had pretty much guaranteed its death. He was sacrificing himself and his bonded in one last blaze of Qi and Dharmic fury to try to immolate me. If he was going to die, his actions suggested that he was willing to accept that sacrifice as long as I died with him.

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My affinities with wind, water, and lightning made a profound difference in my ability to control the storm I had summoned. My Dharmic control had already increased the fusion between the elements and me, giving me control that was exponentially more advanced than I had enjoyed at the Body Tempering Realm. With the addition of lightning as a true affinity instead of the byproduct of mixing air and water, that fusion between myself and the elements reached the next stage.

I was a creature of the three elements now. A storm made manifest. I summoned the storm and controlled it as an extension of my will and body. We had almost become one, and I reveled in the glorious dichotomy between the physical and the elemental.

My [Dao of Movement] enhanced my understanding of each element as I watched the interplay between wind, water, and lightning. I could see how they moved, the interplay between each element enough to chart the course of each lightning strike.

I wasn't able to see, yet, how the atoms became agitated, how friction, bonds, and chemical reactions melded to generate each lightning strike, but I could see where the bolt initiated and could direct that bolt from the point of creation to an end point of my choosing.

Each strike became part of the elemental body that I had crafted. The lightning firing like the neurons of my nervous system. Impulses and information that controlled the storm. The focused lightning blast that I had learned to create and used to free myself bent easily to my will, And now that I had the benefit of a storm to power that energy, I was no longer constrained from using it worried that I would exhaust my Qi.

The first bolt of energy I released targeted Daniel's bonded beast. It was petty and juvenile of me, but I wanted him to experience real pain and loss before I killed him. And destroying his bonded companion was the most effective method available.

His scream of agony and despair as the animal died restored my equilibrium. It made me realize I had become lost to the storm, a creature of elemental fury, and that by subsuming my will within the forces of nature, I was forsaking that part of myself that made me an Elf. His tortured scream reminded me that I was better than this. I would not become the type of person I despised in my fight for deliverance.

I would fight to defend myself, but even in my anger and my desire for revenge and retribution, I would act holding true to my own moral compass. Right over wrong. Compassion over indifference. And mercy over revenge.

I released my second empowered lightning blast, targeting Daniel, ending his suffering. He was too broken by this point to put up even a token defense and seemed to almost embrace his death.

The stillness as the battle ended, the quiet rumbling of the storm, the only proof that we had unleashed devastation against each other was unsettling. It was humbling to realize that for all his fire and fury, at the end, we were nothing but flotsam, caught in the eye of the storm.

This wasn't the first person I had killed. But he was the first person I knew, even if we were only barely acquainted. I had that same nauseous feeling wash over my body I had the last time I took a life. That sinking feeling of fear in the pit of my stomach I got every time I considered my mortality. Once I had confirmed he was really dead, I was overwhelmed by that clammy sensation you feel as your body stops producing the endorphins required to see you survive.

It took a few seconds, a concerted effort of swallowing to hold back the bile that threatened to escape, but eventually, that feeling of lightheadedness passed. That feeling as if you were about to either pass out or throw up tamed.

I managed to constrain myself from giving in to those feelings. A few steadying breaths helped as I gained control. Satisfied I would not soil myself, I released my control over the storm I had summoned, allowing it to fade as quickly as it had arrived.

Storm and Pluton spiraled over the location where Daniel's body had landed a few times, perhaps making certain he was really dead before losing interest. Storm went to harass the Peryton herd that had made the island in the middle of the lake their home, while Pluton went to check on the Roc chicks.

I would need to find cultivators to bond with them and soon if I wanted the chicks to have the same type of a head start that Storm had received by bonding with me. I needed to find all the animals I had collected for people to bond with. The new cultivators I had convinced to join my newly formed House would work to bond with the Peryton I had collected, but I would use the Roc chicks as an incentive to entice stronger cultivators to my banner.

My decision to form a Dojo would change the makeup of the type of cultivator I would nourish. I needed a more diverse group of people than just Beast Tamers if I wanted to create something that was able to protect more than a small town.

I realized that these thoughts, fleeting as they may be, were a defense mechanism and a stalling tactic. I needed to search Daniel's body. I needed to pilfer what I could use. Hide or destroy what I couldn't. And make sure any artifact that might be used to trace him was rendered inert. Only then could I leave the body to be absorbed by the Golden Lodoicea in the cave.

I would not be reporting his death or our battle to anyone, not even Elder Shadow. Daniel's family was too powerful. They were too well connected to make an enemy of. Let them wonder what happened to him.

My participation in his death could remain a secret forever.