Vayra walked out into the arena on stiff legs. She shook out her arms and rolled her neck side to side, trying to loosen up.

Over the past two days, between fights, she’d been practicing internal Warding, meanwhile sparring with Glade. Her arms ached from constant use, as did her legs, and she’d probably pushed herself too hard and too far, but there was no sense in turning back now.

In fact, she needed to push herself harder. Just like the spiritual senses and the blindfolds, she needed to force herself to take the next leap.

This time, she wouldn’t use any normal Warding techniques. Only internal Warding would do. Soon, she’d face Larra, and then Karmion. Nathariel placed a high value on the technique, so Vayra needed to know it too. She might get a few scrapes, but it’d keep her insides intact.

‘Now, Vayra,’ Phasoné said as they walked out into the center of the arena, ‘remember, this technique is based on fire. Setting your interior ablaze and willing the fire to protect yourself. The flames of the stars should sear through you. Remember on Harvest Sanctuary? The simple glimpses of profundity that you mustered to create the Astral Shroud, or to come to your Captain revelation.’

“I remember.”

‘You’re modifying a technique, you’re making it your own. You must seek a deeper understanding of it, what it represents, and what it distills down to at its core. When you know, you’ll know.’

“Thanks…”

She didn’t mean to be dismissive, but it wasn’t just something she could call on at a will. She’d not come up with anything, except replicating the Arcara movements that Nathariel had used for the internal Ward.

“Ymmari Neldotter Ymman!” Karmion announced. “Sponsor: Ymmandris. Path: Runehunger.”

A young-looking woman, around Vayra’s age (though she was likely actually much older), strode across the opposite side of the arena. She held a staff-sized ink brush in her hand, and a shield-sized painter’s pallet of black, ink-like paint in the other. Like a fairy trying to use a human’s painting equipment.

Karmion announced Vayra soon after, speaking calmly but somewhat coolly, like he knew exactly what she had done. Like he had something to hold over her head. Then as soon as he finished, a trumpet blared, signalling the start of the fight.

Ymmari swept her ink brush up, dragging it through the air. She used a Reach technique, manipulating a swath of black ink to slash in from the side, poised to slice Vayra’s head off. She dispersed it with a Starlight Palm.

But a descendant of the Goddess of Ink and Writing wouldn’t just use basic Reaches. As Vayra defended herself, Ymmari whipped her paintbrush staff around ahead of herself, writing on the empty air. Black, calligraphic runes appeared in the air, encircling Vayra. She couldn’t tell their meaning or use, but they wrapped around faster than she could meaningfully register and react to.

Then Ymmari flooded them with mana.

In a flash, they all activated. They resonated at a high pitch, then shattered, firing shards of hardened ink at her. She shielded her face with her mechanical arm and Warded her gut and flank, concentrating her shields as best she could to stop the blast.

The internal Warding didn’t stop the shards from slicing up her outer layer of skin, but it never penetrated deeper than a papercut. The worst papercut ever, maybe, but never life threatening.

But that was just the first barrage.

Already, a new ring of runes was forming around her, inky sigils floating only a few feet away from her. She tried disrupting them with a Shattered Palm, but they reformed in seconds.

Again, they flooded with mana, erupting in blue light for a moment before shattering into daggers.

Again, she shielded her interior, and again, papercuts formed all along the exterior of her skin. Her robe frayed.

She wasn’t meant to be a tank. Sitting around and taking a beating? That didn’t conform to the rest of the abilities she earned. It couldn’t work for her internal Wards, either. And, given how effortlessly Ymmari used this cage to trap and eventually pummel Vayra? Vayra would run out of mana before her opponent.

‘Direct your shields,’ Phasoné said. ‘Angle them. Bend them to the purpose you desire.’

At the moment? Vayra desired to escape this and not lose.

She shut her eyes. Another circle of runes was forming around her, but she ignored it. She wanted to blast out, to run and escape, to become a wedge.

A wedge pierces through. But a wedge was a method of directing force, and it was suited for sword-Paths.

‘Do stars protect?’ Phasoné quizzed.

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Well…she took the energy of the stars and used it to attack.

‘You also use it to speed yourself up.’

Stars provided heat for the planets. They kept their planets entangled in their gravity and held them at the right distance to support life.

‘That’s the realm of sunlight, not starlight.’

There couldn’t be a massive difference.

‘The realms of humanoid godly authority were devised before men sailed the Stream. Before anyone knew better the difference between the sun and the stars.’

Vayra dropped to the ground and sheltered once more from an attack. The pressure of the ink pellets weighed down on her, pressing her into the send and trying to compact her down. She protected herself, but her mana was nearly halfway out, and Ymmari hadn’t even broken a sweat.

“Phas,” Vayra hissed, speaking as quickly as she could. “Do you have an internal Warding technique?”

‘No, but I advanced my regular Wards to their strongest form through the same strategy. How can stars protect?’

There were plenty of stars that didn’t have planets, who the Stream didn’t even pass close by. They made up the bulk of the galaxy, its form and skeleton. They provide light, they give form to the night sky.

Even in the scale of a God-heir’s lifetime, a star seemed eternal. Yet most of them…couldn’t even be interacted with, not like sunlight. Intangible.

A Ward wasn’t just a shield. It kept things away.

The concepts aligned and resonated in her mind, and she accepted it, then imbued it into her Wards. She wouldn’t split the rune-circle apart. She’d push right through it, without it even touching her.

When the barrage ended, she leapt up, then mustered her lowest, widest, most maneuverable stance. The one she’d used to slip away from the authorities many times with. Slippery.

Then, using both her internal Ward and her Astral Shroud, she sprinted forward. A wave of untouchable pulses pushed out, allowing her to pass straight through the runic circle without disrupting it at all.

She darted across the arena to Ymmari and drew her pistol, then held it up to the woman’s throat. Ymmari surrendered.

The second half of the fight wasn’t a contest. Now that Vayra had a way around her opponent’s main attack, she could end the fight in seconds. She activated all her techniques at once—the Ward, the Astral Shroud, and Moulded her scythe. Her mana drained so quickly that she could register it fleeing her body, but it lasted more than long enough for her to win.

Ymmari twirled her staff, and a shield of miniature ink runes hovered around it, protecting it from the cutting power of Vayra’s scythe. A counter-attack almost caught Vayra off-guard, but she used her disruption runestone in her mechanical hand to dispel it, then drew on Adair to enhance her reflexes and circumvent the rest of Ymmari’s defenses.

The woman surrendered when Vayra pressed the cutting edge of the scythe up to her neck.

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Glade’s fight took place nearly immediately after Vayra’s, and by the time she made it up to the viewing platform of King Tallerion’s tower, he had already won the first round. He fought a moon-Path God-heir with a pair of muskets. A monkey made of jade rested on her shoulder, but as soon as the battle began, it slipped inside the God-heir’s corespace with one of the muskets and loaded it.

While the God-heir used the other.

The God-heir swapped her muskets as soon as her companion reloaded them, and she skirted around the edge of the arena, firing a constant barrage at Glade. The shots were regular steel balls, but the God-heir channelled moonlight into a pattern of Moulded Arcara at the muzzle, imbuing each shot with the pale green moonlight she drew in from a spatial rift on the other side of the arena. They moved faster than regular bullets and tore through Glade’s Reach techniques with ease.

The swordwyrm stayed safely behind his shoulder. If a shot hit it, it’d pierce straight through the blade. If that’d truly do lasting damage to the swordwyrm itself, she couldn’t say, but it didn’t seem to want the risk.

But Glade moved fast, and despite his strength-based body, he had the nimbleness of an Order Adept. Every shot he dodged, he closed the distance between himself and the God-heir a few paces.

“How do you place your chances of victory, now?” came a voice from behind her.

She was leaning on the front railing of the viewing platform, watching the arena below as usual. She glanced over her shoulder at King Tallerion, who approached with his arms behind his back, hands folded formally. He was dressed much like he had been on their first encounter—with a long coat, proudly displayed military awards, and a white shawl with black speckles.

“I…I don’t want to make any assumptions, sir,” Vayra said. “I would hate to get everyone’s hopes up, only to fail.”

King Tallerion snorted. “Welcome to a position of power, my dear. You don’t want to disappoint me, and that’s understandable, but if you never dare to make projections, you won’t get very far.” He shook his head. “I wasn’t supposed to be king—this you know. My brother was. I spent my youth as a prince-commander of the Royal Dragoons, and I am weary. But I learned much from those days.”

“I think there’s a high chance of reaching…the top eight,” Vayra said. “The biggest threats? Larra, Myrrir.”

The crowd below fell silent, and when Vayra looked forward again, she noticed that Glade had defeated his opponent—as expected.

“What about Varion?” asked the king.

“Hm?” Vayra tilted her head. “I—”

“He has won all his fights in the first two rounds. A descendant of Karmion, though he has the seemingly rare ability to manipulate ice. And that battle axe he uses…seems powerful. Forged by a master smith, though I, being a mortal, don’t dare comment on its effectiveness.”

Vayra gulped. “Admittedly, I was focussing on the threats I knew about.” She shut her eyes. “You should know: Karmion has one last resort. If we fail here, he will unleash a horde of Ko-Ganall on the sector and wipe it out.”

Tallerion rubbed the bridge of his nose. “That is…not ideal.” His face twitched, as if his composure was about to break.

“There are…millions of people here, at least, and many others in the sector,” she said. “If worst comes to worst, they will all die. If nothing happens, he’ll unleash them in three weeks—at the end of the tournament.”

“I will leave,” said Tallerion, and immediately, Vayra’s eyes widened. But he continued: “I will muster the Velaydian fleets. I will bring as many ships as I can. Do you know how to activate the Vales?”