Phasoné retreated back inside Vayra’s body. As soon as the white, glowing manifestation of the goddess disappeared, Vayra gave up control of her hand. Just the scythe reappeared, now in Vayra’s grip and ready to fight with.
The Order of Balance Adepts rushed in front of Vayra, holding their swords up. Two of them rested their swords on their forearms, and the third held her weapon down by her side with an iron grip. A simple sword technique glinted down the edge of their weapons.
The woman strode through the eastern door, stepping into a ray of moonlight. Her coat fell around her shoulders like an ocean made of void—the darkest sea Vayra had ever seen—and its ends rippled white with frothy waves. A wolf with a mane of pure rippling water trotted behind her, growling and gnashing its teeth.
Vayra couldn’t even feel a buzzing in the back of her neck. Was this…a mortal?
Then the woman ripped three batons out of her coat’s inner pocket and tossed them up into the air. As they fell, she pointed her fingers, sending a string of water through a hole in the center of every baton. She clenched her fist, and they snapped together into a three-part staff. When she caught it, she gave it a whirl, and the segments sloshed back and forth like a whip. The tip struck the mud, kicking up a blast of dirt.
Definitely a God-heir.
‘One of Karmion’s heirs,’ Phasoné said inside Vayra’s head.
On the other side of the glass divider, Nathariel was yelling, but his voice was so muffled that Vayra couldn’t make out any words. She stepped forwards and wedged herself into the formation of Order Adepts. “Whoever she is,” she told the three, “we’ll take her together.”
The Adepts nodded.
Then the God-heir threw off her cloak and coat. It was like a veil had been ripped off her spirit. An instant buzz seared the back of Vayra’s neck, and the Adepts winced as well. Under her coat, the God-heir wore a simple, sleeveless fighting tunic and a cravat Moulded from water-Arcara.
Vayra slammed her eyes shut for a second to reign the sensation under control. When she opened them, the God-heir and her wolf were already charging.
‘It’s Larra!’ Phasoné snapped.
One of the Adepts intercepted Larra, and another engaged the wolf. The first Adept’s sword glanced off the tip of the three-part staff. His sword technique struck with enough force to push the staff up, the thin line of Arcara bursting out into sparks. But it didn’t even leave a dent in the staff.
The other third of the staff snapped towards the Adept’s head, and Vayra intercepted it with a swipe of her scythe.
Vayra met Larra’s eyes, and the both of them asserted a mutual scan of each other’s spirits.
“Commodore…” Vayra breathed.
“Third Lieutenant!” Larra hissed.
With a palm strike, Larra sent Vayra skidding back across the foyer. Vayra protected her chest with a shield of starlight, preventing her own ribs from shattering and cracking under the weight of the blow.
Vayra came to a halt against the glass wedge dividing the foyer. Glade, Nathariel, and the other Adept all pounded on the glass with techniques, while Pels shuffled around the bottom, as if looking for a way through. But they were all on the other side, and that barrier was built by a God.
‘They’re not getting through that,’ Phasoné said. ‘We’re on our own.’
“I thought you said Larra was a Captain…”
‘I thought she was!’
“Well, she’s exerting the strength of a Commodore, whatever she’s doing.” Pressing her hands against the glass behind her, Vayra pushed herself up to a standing position and grabbed the scythe with both hands. “We don’t have much of a choice.”
Phasoné warned, ‘She’s a maybe-Commodore…’
“We beat Myrrir before.”
‘And you had the Mediator Form then. Or help from Nathariel.’
The Adepts attacked Larra from all sides, their swords whirling and spinning. Every one of them was a master swordsman, and two of them were Master’s Mates—meaning they had enhanced bodies.
Their swords flashed silver, whirling through the air and sparking against Larra’s three-part staff or the wolf’s maw.
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But they weren’t God-heirs. With such low spirit potential, they didn’t have much mana to spare, nor Arcara to use. Aside from strengthening their swords, only one used another technique—she mustered a thin set of claws on the tips of her fingers and slashed the wolf’s muzzle.
As Vayra ran back to the fight, the Adepts started to slow down, fighting defensively and conservatively, favouring defense over offense. They backed away. Their enhanced bodies weren’t anywhere near the strength of Glade’s, and they hadn’t been sponsored by an Admiral.
When Vayra made it halfway to Larra, the Captain’s staff snapped up, smashing straight through one of the Adept’s heads like it was a gourd. The rest of his body crumpled. Vayra’s mouth slipped open and she stopped for a second.
With enhanced bodies, the Adepts shouldn’t have been so vulnerable…
That meant they were already out of mana.
Vayra sprinted. Before she arrived, the two other Adepts leapt in, trying to exploit a gap in Larra’s guard. The wolf tackled one and pinned her arms, then ripped her throat out with a single bite. Larra yelled, then spun around and delivered a heavy smash to the top of the last Adept’s head, splitting his skull.
Vayra skittered to a halt. The Adepts were gone in a matter of seconds.
She widened her stance and backed up defensively, but Larra continued her assault. She dropped strike after strike on Vayra. Each blow, Vayra pushed to the side with the haft of her scythe, deflecting or blocking. She Braced her arms with starlight just to stop them from crumpling under the weight of the blows.
Then Larra Braced her arms as well. She gave a brutish smirk as tendrils of freshwater snaked down her forearms and wound around her wrists.
When the next blow came, Vayra didn’t even try to block it.
The staff smashed down into the mud, kicking up a valley of debris and loose moss. The shockwave blasted Vayra off her feet.
‘Look out!’ Phasoné yelled. ‘Roll to the left, now!’
Larra pounced towards her, stomping down with her foot. When it struck the ground, it sent a shock for a few paces.
Vayra rolled away just in time, Larra’s staff smashed down. Vayra blocked the tip of it with the haft of her scythe, but there was too much force for her to handle. Her elbows buckled and the scythe’s shaft snapped back into her nose.
The three-part staff bent at its top third, and the middle struck Vayra in the gut—she cast a starlight shield over her stomach to absorb the blow. It absorbed the blow, but the shield shattered, ripping mana out of her body and scattering it like motes of dust.
Bracing her leg, Vayra kicked out and struck Larra in the knee. The Commodore took a step back—long enough to Vayra to leap back to her feet and whirl her scythe up into a ready position.
Spitting clear blood out her mouth, Vayra led with a low swipe of her scythe. She aimed for Larra’s thighs. The woman twirled her staff side to side, only giving ground in inches. Her wolf paced back and forth behind her, snarling and licking its slashed muzzle. Its eyes glinted yellow, though. If it needed to protect its master, it would.
When Larra’s back pressed up against the glass wall at the eastern edge of the foyer, she held her arms out and grinned. She blocked Vayra’s next swipe, but didn’t give any ground. Her arms weren’t even straining.
Then, as if to assert even more superiority, Larra let go of the staff with one hand. A freshwater-Arcara mixture curled up from the gaps in the staff and grasped the blade of Vayra’s scythe, holding it in place.
The scythe glowed brighter and screeched. The staff’s surface glowed red hot, but the scythe couldn’t cut through it instantly. The water-Arcara mixture turned to steam, but there was always more to replace it.
‘Probably a gemstone-steel mixture,’ Phasoné posited. ‘Like Hammontor’s hooks.’
More and more water evaporated every second, but the steam, still under control of Larra, whistled back to her arm and condensed, replenishing itself.
With her free hand, Larra stroked her wolf’s mane. The wolf grinned as well.
“What do you say, Gnasher?” Larra asked as Vayra strained against the bind. “Shall we take it up a notch?”
The wolf (Gnasher, apparently) sneered. It lifted its lips, revealing a maw of yellow teeth—all except one fang. It was pure black, with veins of iridescent Stream water flowing through it.
‘An Admiral-level weapon…’ Phasoné breathed.
The veins in the tooth surged brighter, and suddenly, the buzz in the back of Vayra’s mind doubled. Larra’s Arcara-grade increased yet another stage, and instead of pushing against just a wall, it felt like Vayra was trying to push against a mountain.
“Admiral…” Vayra breathed.
She pushed Phasoné out of her hand, dispelling the scythe and freeing herself from the bind. She stumbled a step back, then shifted to the side to dodge another heavy smash of Larra’s staff.
“Vayra!” Nathariel yelled, his voice booming through the glass. Glade, Pels, and the Adept on the other side all plugged their ears, but their eyes were wide still. She didn’t want to know how loud it would have been right next to him. “You are smaller! You are faster, more agile! You have tools to fight brutes!”
‘Not Admiral-stage brutes, and not with only a quarter of your mana left,’ Phasoné hissed urgently.
“That little?”
Larra lunged and slammed her staff into the ground once more, throwing up a wall of debris. Vayra rolled to the side, but dirt still rained down on her.
“Vayra!” Nathariel yelled again. “You are not a weak street-rat anymore! You are much more! Build your Path, and survive! You have everything you need!”
Vayra grabbed a handful of mud and tossed it over Larra’s boot, then pushed a shield into it. When Larra tried to take her next step, it stuck in place only a little longer. Larra stumbled, and Vayra took her chance. She slipped past.
Gnasher tried to pounce on her, but he was nowhere near as strong as his master. Vayra blasted the wolf with a Starlight Palm, pushing it aside, then scrambled out the open eastern door beside Larra.
She ran out into the greenhouse.