With a sharp inhale, Vayra sidestepped.

Almost instant. Almost like she was reacting to something she was seeing, with only milliseconds of delay.

The bayonet whistled past her harmlessly. She swatted the rifle down with a swipe of her scythe.

Even without her sight, she could picture her opponent ahead of her clearly. She struck him in the back of the leg with the haft of her scythe, keeping him close, then evaded a blast of sunlight-Arcara.

They traded blows for a few seconds. Vayra blocked and countered every strike, picturing where it would land, and each time, the delay between her registering the strike and acting on it shrank.

Whirling around Jarril’s back, she held her scythe at his throat, hooked blade pointing toward herself.

Jarril immediately ended his techniques and surrendered.

Secretly, Vayra had been hoping that he’d keep fighting and force her to continue, to end the fight quickly, so she wouldn’t have to do it again, but she still accepted the minor victory. Besides, Jarril’s life was still a life. If he chose to surrender, she couldn’t just kill him on the spot—no matter how easy it’d make things.

But that meant she had one more round to practice.

She accepted the break, refilled her mana, and bore the scolding of King Tallerion’s aide. And when the next fight began, she kept her blindfold on. It was now or never.

‘No hesitation, this time,’ Phasoné said. ‘If Jarril was underestimating us before, he won’t be, now. We need to use everything we have.’

“I can’t just develop trust for my senses, for my sixth sense, in a matter of an hour…” Vayra whispered as she approached the center of the arena. “There has to be more to it than that.”

‘There is, and it’s called practice.’

“You’re being contradictory. I don’t have time to practice.”

‘But you already have. You’ve had me in your head for months. My senses haven’t led you astray, so yours won’t either.’

She had a point. Vayra just didn’t know what to do with it.

‘What to do with it? Win.’

The last trumpet blast blared, and the third round began. She let Jarril attack first, alerting her to his presence and identifying where he was in her perception of the arena.

He attacked from a distance, retreating back across the sandy pit. Through his presence of looming danger, she picked him out and placed him exactly in her mental image. He pointed his musket and launched a beam of sunlight-Arcara across the arena at her. It seared across the sand, turning it to glass as it approached, and she conjured a Ward to block it.

He kept his distance, circling the edge of the arena. If she couldn’t get close, he’d wear down her Arcara and pick her off.

She activated the Astral Shroud and leapt across the arena. If push came to shove, she could use her Mediator Form, but there was no sense in draining her Arcara if she didn’t have to.

She couldn't take a straight line across the arena. Jarril crouched, pointed his musket, and fired a continuous blast. It'd drain his mana, but he could sweep across the entire arena.

He was getting desperate.

She ducked and slid under the beam's main blast, emerging on the other side, but he swept back the other direction. With a flick of his wrist, he could chase her.

But it left a steady warning in her mind, and she knew exactly where it was. Every time she dipped under it and used the Astral Shroud to navigate the beam, she made it a few steps closer.

Then he cut off his attack. He went silent in her perception for a few seconds. Had he surrendered on the spot, ensuring that he no longer posed any threat to her, thus dropping out of her perception?

A heartbeat later, he appeared again as a wave of threat. He was charging, bayonet held straight ahead, and joining her in close-quarters fighting.

‘He’s going out with a bang.’

Vayra reached up and ran her hand down the back of Adair, drawing on his abilities to bolster her own fighting strength. It might not help her trust her sixth sense, but it would help her reaction speeds once she registered the necessity.

They exchanged a set of blows at close-range, Jarril jabbing with his bayonet and Vayra whirling her scythe to deflect.

He’d used a large portion of his mana, but he still must have been using a Bracing technique, because he was much faster than a regular man would’ve been.

But not faster than her. She dispelled her scythe, and darted around to his back, delivering a Starlight Palm. He whirled to face her, and the impression of him spun as well, like a vortex in the forefront of her mind. She unleashed a pulse of white light into his knee, then sprang up and struck his forehead.

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Too late did she register his musket whirling back around to slice at her chest—too late to avoid it completely. The tip of the bayonet left a faint cut, but it’d heal in a matter of hours.

But he was reeling. He hadn’t expected her to dodge. As soon as it passed, she drew her pistol and conjured a blast of Starlight-Arcara. It surged into the side of his musket and flung it from his grasp. Before he could slink away, she sprinted up to his side and pointed her pistol at the side of his head.

He lowered his arms, cut off his techniques, and stopped cycling Arcara.

Vayra ripped off her blindfold. A weight lifted off her shoulders and her heartbeat slowed, and she lowered her arms.

‘Good work,’ Phasoné said.

Vayra breathed, “Thanks,” then bowed her head to Jarril and backed away. He could’ve taken her life at the first chance he had available, but he’d fought honourably, and even now, he faced the crowd with his head high. She tilted her head and said, “Why’d you do it?”

“Hm?” he asked. He had long blonde hair that glinted in the sun, and he wore a sleeveless, tight tunic with no armour.

“You could’ve killed me. You’d have been a hero.”

“Mediator,” he said, “I did not deem it appropriate, not after you saved my brother’s life.”

“Saved…?”

“He was a prisoner of that rogue water-Path God-heir, taken for experimentation.” Jarril clasped both of his hands and bowed to her. “Good luck, Mediator. You will need it.”

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When Vayra returned to the top of the Velaydian tower, to the main outlook, King Tallerion was furious.

“You jeopardized the future of the entire star-nation on…on this? You could’ve embarrassed us all!” He paced back and forth in front of her, holding a cane. With every step he took, it clacked on the ground. “If you had lost, the Velaydian Kingdom would’ve looked as weak as…as some backwater planet on the Line of Battle!”

Vayra dipped her head respectfully. King Tallerion hadn’t ever been this…upset, or un-composed, before. But there was a lot riding on this tournament; she couldn’t deny that.

“Apologies, your majesty,” she said. Two Redmarines stood behind her, their muskets cocked. “But…in my defence, you now look much stronger. One of your representatives just beat a God-heir blindfolded. And I…uh, learned something new?”

Nathariel and Glade both stood off to the side. Glade’s face was illegible, but Nathariel had a casual smirk.

King Tallerion sighed. “I understand, however, I would ask you to not do that again.”

“I won’t,” Vayra said, dipping her head.

As soon as the king dismissed them, she and Glade ran to the railing at the front of the chamber and looked out over the arena below, where a different fight was taking place. Myrrir fought a young man on a water-based Path, and he was winning—again, with ease.

“At least he hasn’t blindfolded himself?” Glade said.

Vayra snorted, then said, “It worked out fine.”

“I know.” A smile slipped onto Glade’s face. “Which is why I am going to do it, too.”

Vayra grinned. “King Tallerion’s gonna hate us.”

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It was evening when Glade’s fight began, and Vayra was watching from the top of King Tallerion’s tower, still. Nathariel had gone down to offer Glade some direct advice and feedback, and Vayra could imagine the aide throwing down his eyes and groaning with exasperation as Glade blindfolded himself.

Karmion announced Glade’s opponent first: “Barrala Nee Arlynton, on the Path of the Ichor Forge.”

A hulking half-orc strode back and forth on the field, wielding a heaving golden hammer—like an upscaled blacksmith’s hammer. A circlet of golden runes orbited her head, and her black hair streamed nearly halfway down her back in a braid. With her free hand, she pounded the chest of her dragoon’s cuirass and hollered something in a foreign language.

“Pleasant company,” Vayra muttered.

‘Theatrics?’ Phasoné supplied jokingly.

“Or she’s just mean. We’ll see how it goes when she gets slapped around by a blindfolded man with low spirit potential.”

‘It’ll catch up to him one day,’ Phasoné said.

“Hopefully, once we get the godly authority into him.”

‘Hopefully.’

The first fight went about as well as Vayra expected: not well. Much like her own first round, it took adjusting to. King Tallerion said nothing, but he approached the railing and let out a long sigh. “I should have known better than to put my faith in two…barely twenty-year-old wizards.”

“Sorry,” Vayra said. “But he’ll win.”

“You’re certain?”

The second round, Glade moved sluggishly and cautiously at first, like a blind man feeling out his surroundings, but halfway through, something clicked. He held his head up high, just like she had, and suddenly, his movements turned precise. He blocked with certainty, he dodged heavy hammer blows, and he whirled his sword.

“You have an invitation,” King Tallerion said. “You and Mr. Arvitir both.”

“From you?”

“A messenger brought it up to the tower,” he said. “From a group of God-heirs. They’re meeting at a tavern in-town. A late-night party, it seems.”

“And you got…this?”

“It was delivered to the tower, unsigned, unmarked. They assumed it was for me.”

“Oh.”

Vayr kept her gaze fixed on the two fighters. Glade now had the upper hand, swerving and dancing around his opponent. He made light cuts and tried to force her surrender, but she wasn’t having it. She swung more and more desperately, and when Glade finally pressed his sword up against her neck, she raised her hammer one last time, preparing a final blow.

Glade’s projection, the sunlight-strand hologram, made a grimace, then drove his blade through her neck.

“You should attend,” said King Tallerion, continuing the conversation from before. “You will need friends here before long.”

“It could be a trap,” she said. “But I don’t suppose that’s stopped us before.”