First, Vayra activated the Mediator Form.

There was no sense in waiting, and she’d need it to match Larra’s power-scaling—the woman was already at Admiral with the help of her artifact.

A white mesh erupted across Vayra’s body, the glimmering projection of Phasoné, and they temporarily joined wills. Phasoné’s power, taken directly from the stars and the heavens above, flooded Vayra’s channels, empowering her.

They both wanted to see Larra driven from this atrium, and perhaps destroyed.

Glade slashed through a blast of water and knocked the tip of Larra’s three-part staff aside, creating an opening for Vayra.

Vayra and Phasoné took it. They charged in, holding their hand out, and slashed at Larra’s chest.

The God-heir knelt and pushed upward with her spare hand. An invisible pulse inside Vayra and Phasoné’s arm countered, pushing the scythe back before it could collide. The pulse continued, gripping Vayra’s blood and pushing her shoulder back. She and Phasoné stumbled. A knife of pain blasted through the inside of their shoulder, ripping the muscles and scratching the bone. They screamed.

Glade whirled around and slashed at Larra’s back, diverting her attention away from Vayra and Phasoné and breaking her hold on them.

Larra whirled and struck at Glade. She thrust her arm out, but he leapt back. But she didn’t need to contact them—her Reach technique already blossomed in her fingers. An invisible technique hit Glade from the inside. A needle-thin tendril of blood blasted out his back, and he yelled in pain.

They needed their internal Warding techniques, and they needed it now.

Vayra and Phasoné, wills combined, drew starlight out of their scarf. They manipulated it as if they were going to launch a Ward across their own body, but then drew it inside, like the start of the rudimentary Bracing technique.

It burned their channels, but they didn’t care. Their channels were resilient and would recover quickly.

They willed the technique to expand, spreading out through their muscles, bones, and most importantly, blood vessels.

Time to see if it did what it was supposed to.

Whirling their scythe, Vayra and Phasoné charged back into the fray. Larra turned toward them, and stretched out both arms. The blood in Vayra’s channels, the water within it, tried to obey, but the Warding held it in place.

Nothing but willpower.

The direct concentration eliminated the benefits of the Mediator Form. They had to assert a great deal of power to maintain the technique across their whole body, and they had to move their limbs with sheer willpower.

Larra couldn’t harm the inside of Vayra’s body, now, but she could make life difficult for them.

When they swung, it was like concrete filled their flesh-and-blood arm. They let go of the scythe and used only their mechanical arm to swing it, but Larra blocked it with her three-part-staff, bound it, then ripped it out of their weak grip.

It un-Moulded itself as soon as it left her grip, shattering into a bunch of tiny particles and flecks, and they unleashed a chain of Starlight Palms into the woman’s chest. She staggered back, then struck them with a heavy overhead swipe from the three-part staff.

They ducked to the side, and the staff collided with their shoulder. It broke the upper layer of skin and drove them down to their knees, but the internal Warding kept their clavicle from chattering.

Then Larra delivered another strike to their side. It bashed into their ribs, and again, didn’t break through.

It did fling them across the atrium. She crashed through a table and into the wall.

Their mouth was getting parched. They were burning mana at an exceptional rate, with the Mediator Form, internal Warding, and all the techniques they were using. They could hold it for another minute, at best.

Larra had forced another wedge in power between them. She’d gotten stronger, and Vayra would need to match the leap.

She and Phasoné pushed themselves to their feet. On the other side of the atrium, Glade duelled Larra. A pinkish-yellow sunset-like glow flowed beneath his skin—he’d activated his own internal Warding technique, and the Dawnspear body was holding.

But just like Vayra, he was moving his body now with sheer willpower and Arcara manipulation, fighting against veins of mud and muscles of clay. He whirled his sword, but it was slower than usual. Larra blocked most of his swipes, but he landed a single slash across her chest.

But eventually, his guard broke. He couldn’t keep up, not fighting her overwhelming power gap and blood manipulation techniques.

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She pummeled him with staff strikes. “The experiment is no good if you use…that shielding!” She landed a direct strike on his core, pushing him deeping into the ground. The floor beneath his feet cracked, and he sank a foot into the earth below.

It was now or never. Time to run the mana to its very end. Vayra and Phasoné activated the Astral Shroud and sprinted across the room, zipping back to Larra, but the woman held out her arm, made a fist, and swung it at them. They used the maneuverability to duck under the blow—until Larra clutched onto their blood.

It was like sprinting through chest-deep water. Vayra’s blood tried and tried to break through the veins and vessels, but her internal Warding held it. Larra tried to freeze the blood in place, slowly suffocating and destroying Vayra’s limbs, but she used her basic, strength-based bracing technique on her heart, forcing the blood to circulate, even if it did feel thick as mud.

But it was all a distraction. Larra threw a fist at their chest, strong and Braced with a technique of her own, and it threw Vayra into the ground beside Glade.

Both Vayra, in the Mediator Form still, and Glade stood up.

“If only you had this technique on Harvest Sanctuary,” Vayra and Phasoné said, looking Larra in the eyes. “Then you’d’ve won by now.”

They had to stall for time and taunt. Already, more captains leapt off the wooden tables. They picked up weapons from the fallen guards and turned to face Larra. The lapin woman who’d started the chain reaction had collapsed, her face pale, against the far wall. Glade must’ve seen her too, because his face contorted into a grimace.

“My days of victory are almost here!” Larra shouted. She still backed up a step. A group of ocean-Path guards gathered behind her, ready to protect her.

“Why us?” Glade snapped. “You will not get away with this. You will be kicked out of the tournament.”

“Don’t be so sure, boy,” Larra snarled.

Vayra shared a glance with Glade. Her will was fraying away from Phasoné’s, and they were losing the Mediator form. They were almost out of mana, and black specks whirled in her vision.

Larra tugged on Vayra’s blood, and Vayra stumbled forward, then launched a Starlight Palm, forcing Larra to take another step back. A First Lieutenant-stage God-heir swiped at her, but Glade reached over and deflected the sword.

The crowd of Captains fanned out behind them—a temporary alliance, in the name of saving their own skins.

Vayra’s grasp on the Mediator Form slipped, and the overlay of Phasoné dispersed into motes of white light.

“You’re done,” Vayra said, her voice alone.

‘You’re almost out of mana,’ Phasoné said, speaking independently inside Vayra’s mind. ‘You’ve got ten seconds to finish this.’

“Everyone saw what happened,” Glade said.

“Acceptable losses. They were the contestants deemed disloyal by my father,” Larra spat. “Their word will mean nothing.”

Vayra lunged, unleashing one more chain of Starlight Palms, but Larra deflected them all. Glade attacked at the same time, but his internal Warding was faltering and flickering. A few of the freed Captains lunged in at the same time, picking targets and attacking.

With a single swat of her three-part staff, Larra struck Vayra and Glade and sent them sprawling back onto the ground. Vayra’s mana depleted, and her techniques sputtered out. With how strong they were, if she tried to push it any further, she’d eat up her body in a matter of seconds.

Glade’s own techniques faded. The swordwyrm rushed to his aid, but it wouldn’t do much—he was out of mana, too.

‘Larra has to be getting low,’ Phasoné commented.

Larra marched forward, whirling her staff. She wasn’t holding it together with as much water, nor was she using any Bracing techniques of her own.

But she’d still crush Vayra and Glade, who, at the moment, were no better than mortals. She raised her staff above her head, and—

A beam of flame-Arcara seared across the room, slicing across Larra’s chest and biting into her shoulder. It launched her to the side and sent her sprawling to the ground, but she still leapt to her feet and spun to face the new threat.

Nathariel and a group of Shattered Moon guards sprinted into the room. The guards pointed their glaives and broke up any skirmishes, then surrounded Larra’s henchmen. Nathariel seared a condensed bolt of fire straight through one man’s chest—he wasn’t stopping or obeying commands—killing him in an instant and dropping him to the ground.

Larra scrambled to her feet, then sprinted to the opposite side of the room and slipped out a different gate. A few guards prepared to chase after her—they were actual Shattered Moon Guardsmen, not Larra’s fakes—but Nathariel held out a hand. “Let her go. Her father will have her released no matter what, and you’ll get yourselves killed.”

Vayra and Glade pushed themselves to their feet. Vayra rubbed her forehead, then blinked the specks away. Nathariel retrieved two flasks of watered-down rum from his voidhorn and tossed it one to each of them. It wouldn’t restore their mana, but it would dispel the dehydration for a little while.

The rest of the Captain-stage God-heirs, the test subjects, looked on. A few of them nodded, but most of them just stared at Vayra and Glade.

Vayra turned in a circle, staring at the destruction. Glade sprinted over to the lapin woman and placed his fingers on her neck. He called, “She’s still alive, but she needs a surgeon.”

“No time to wait,” Nathariel said, then motioned back up to the surface. “And you still need to get an Arcara model of yourselves made, if I’m not mistaken.”

image [https://static.wixstatic.com/media/f3a882_2bcdeab6626a49c1bc2fa21d230a67c6~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_560,h_281,al_c,lg_1,q_85,enc_auto/ship%20better.png]

Karmion paced back and forth across the floor of his office. It overlooked the arena on one side, and on the other, a bank of windows allowed him to peer into the forest behind.

A quivering messenger stood in the middle of the room, carrying a parchment note. Karmion dictated his instructions back to the man: “I will ensure that those under Larra’s command do not ever spread word of this.”

He’d kill them. It was too risky. Easier to just kill them, and not let word of this disaster spread.

“Our public statement will be this: Larra had no part in it—there’s no concrete evidence—and anyone involved was a distant, weak relation of mine, acting entirely on their own will. Do you understand?”

The messenger nodded.

“Now get out of my sight.”