King Tallerion’s aide darted around Vayra and Glade, brushing off their clothes and fixing sashes, cumberbunds, and cravats. “You must look in top condition when Karmion presents the top four contestants. No exceptions.”

He’d unveiled a second set of clothing for each of them, prepared for expressly this purpose. Their old clothes from the earlier fights would be too tattered and damaged, now, and this was their chance to continue projecting the Velaydian Kingdom’s strength—while keeping with their previous styles. She never knew so much thought had been put into it, but again, the aide had explained that they still needed to be recognizable to the audience.

As long as Vayra could still fight effectively, she went along with the change.

Now, she wore a dark red sleeveless turtleneck made of overlapping layers of fabric. Her old corset had been too damaged to keep using, so instead, she used a couple belts to keep the robe tight and out of her way (no sense in accidentally cutting it off while fighting, and she wasn’t Glade, who had trained his entire life in impractical coats that swirled behind him, making every movement seem more impressive while obscuring his actual strike).

A black glove hugged her flesh-and-blood hand all the way up to her elbow, and she tucked her one starsteel bracer atop it. The boost it gave her Arcara was negligible, now, and it was mainly for show.

Lastly, she’d donned brown trousers and a set of wooden greaves that matched the shade of her mechanical limbs.

As the waiting room’s doors groaned open, she wrapped her scarf around her neck, then marched out into the open of the arena.

For now, it was just a presentation—not a fight. A brass choir played a fanfare, and the arena’s crowd rang out with cheers.

She and Glade walked out side-by-side. He’d replaced his old tunic with a pristine, silky navy-style dress shirt, and as usual, he wore a neat cravat—though it was pinned down to keep it from flapping. His cumberbund was now a shade of rusty yellow, like the sunset sky, and his black coat had vibrant yellow-gold rings on its cuffs and lapels. The swordwyrm clung to his back in a ceremonial shoulder sheath, and his regular sword hung from his hip.

She and Glade met another two contestants in the center of the arena. They were both young men, appearing around her age (though they could’ve been anywhere from one year to a couple hundred older).

She recognized Varion instantly. He had natural red hair and wore a fur cloak instead of Karmion’s God-heirs’ regular clothes. Beneath, he shouldered a tight-fitting blue tunic with faux-runic script around its neck and cuffs. He set his axe down and pressed both hands atop its head, leaning on it.

As Vayra watched, the frost clinging to the edge of his fur cloak shook and shuddered, like it was alive. Even in the direct sunlight, it didn’t get misty or melt. It was probably the spirit he was nurturing for his Grand Admiral advancement.

She couldn’t tell exactly how close he was, though when she scanned his spirit, it felt about the same weight as Glade and hers.

Lastly was a tall man in a sleeveless tunic. He’d taken no care to maintain his appearance, and his long brown hair hung in front of his face in messy locks. Grease and ash smeared his entire body, like he’d just stepped out of a forge—which was fitting for the hammer on his back. He was Farrir’s son.

‘His name is Drandall,’ Phasoné commented. ‘Just for your reference.’

“Thanks,” Vayra muttered. “Didn’t forget.”

‘Yes you did.’

“There’s a difference between forgetting and not knowing in the first place.”

‘You did know, when you perused the fight schedule. You stared at it a couple times.’

“If it’d been a more common name, I’d have remembered.”

‘Yeah, sure.’

“Vayra,” Glade whispered. “Eyes are on us.”

“Right.” She cleared her throat and straightened up, then glanced at King Tallerion’s viewing tower. Though the king wasn’t here, Myrrir was still watching her, and now, Ameena stood up in the tower with him, watching over the contestants.

But more than them, almost half the eyes in the audience were staring at her, from all around the arena.

Karmion hovered high above the arena, his arms wide. A much larger projection of him shone below, made up solely from sunlight. It hovered between the projections of the final four contestants.

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“I present the final four candidates: Varion, Drandall, Glade, and Vayra. The eighth round of this tournament will begin at noon today, and the final round will proceed three days afterward. I wish good luck to all the candidates involved.”

At that, the crowd was silent.

“Please allow the final four a few hours to make their preparations, and then eighth battles will begin! By the end of the day, we will have our final pair!”

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]

Vayra and Varion stepped out into the arena at noon.

‘You have the plan down?’ Phasoné asked. ‘We’re here to break his axe and pave the way for Glade to move forward. We don’t break the axe, we lose. We break the axe, we win. Nothing else matters.’

“Staying alive matters,” Vayra said as she walked across the sand floor. She tightened her scarf and adjusted her robe. “Glade can’t win alone, and we still need to destroy Karmion.”

‘That too,’ Phasoné said. ‘But we aren’t here to win the tournament fight.’

“I’ll do my best,” Vayra said.

She met Varion in the center of the arena. He stood a few paces across the center from her, and when he stared at her, a physical chill ran down her spine. The air dropped a few degrees in temperature in an aura around him.

Before the fight began, he raised his hand, then mustered an orb of water vapour from the air—his seer-core. It didn’t condense as quickly as some of Karmion’s other children could manipulate water.

‘He has other priorities,’ Phasoné said. ‘He’s one of the only children of Karmion who expanded his authority to ice.’

Vayra mustered her scythe and held it behind her, then sunk into a low fighting stance. When the trumpet sounded, she barely registered it. She sprang forward, targeting the axehead rather than Varion’s body.

He jumped aside, then thrust his arm down. The orb of water splashed into the sand and expanded out in a streak. Varion raised his arm and clenched his fist, and spikes of ice rose up, nearly skewering Vayra through the chin. She slashed through them. A plume of steam rose up, and as soon as they formed, the spikes disappeared, falling back into the sand and snaking away from her.

Not good. They were moving to encircle and entrap. Wherever they traveled, a layer of frost formed on the surface of the sand.

She activated her Astral Shroud, then sprang away, jumping over lines of frost and snaking around behind Varion.

He spun with her and conjured another seer-core’s worth of water, then plunged it into the sand and conjured a wall in front of her. She Warded his insides, then expanded it and passed through the wall without interacting with it at all.

Varion snarled. She ignored him and zipped closer in a flash, then slashed at his body, forcing him to defend himself. His axehead ground against her scythe, and its blade heated up, but she couldn’t cut through.

‘It’s some sort of alloy,’ Phasoné said. ‘I can’t confirm what it is, though there are gemstones in there.’

She kept pushing, holding the scythe in place. The axehead turned red-hot, but the metal didn’t yield yet. Varion conjured ice along the axehead. Lines of frost filled the runes, then tried to climb up onto her scythe. They snaked up her scythe’s blade before melting and turning to steam, but there were no cracks to seep into, and there was no real weapon to tear apart. Varion couldn’t force her to back away like he had with his other opponents.

She was the perfect choice to destroy the weapon.

But Varion was still bigger, bulkier, and stronger. He pushed back with his physical strength, then Braced his arms with ice crystals, then thrust Vayra back and sent her sliding through the sand.

“Where’s the strength of the Mediator, hm?” he snarled. “Loyalty is the most powerful. Give yourself over to the cause, blindly if you must, and you’ll become stronger than you’ll ever imagine. But you can’t comprehend that, can you? You think your personality makes you a good Mediator?”

Vayra rolled to the side and pushed up, then jumped back into the fray. She and Varion traded blows for a few more seconds, both of them moving fast enough to blur the sunlight projections above.

Varion landed a strike down her side, and another shallow cut across her forehead, aiming where he thought she’d be. With Adair’s help, she navigated around his axehead once. He Warded his neck to protect himself, but she aimed for his axehead. With a single blow to the joint where the head and the haft met, she caused a thin crack to appear in the wood.

It’d take more than one hit.

Varion raised an inch-think shard of ice through her foot as soon as she planted it, then swung his axe at her neck.

Before the blow landed, she deactivated her techniques and surrendered, raising her hands.

Varion stopped, then pulled his weapon away. He shook his head and shot her a look of disgust. “Weak.”

With a wince and gasp, Vayra tugged her foot free from the shard of ice, then walked back to where Glade and the aide waited at the edge of the arena. She tried not to limp, but she couldn’t walk properly, either. With each step, she cycled Arcara back to her foot, feeding her body. Her flesh knitted back together and her bones regrew, but the next round would start before it completely healed.

When she reached the bucket of Stream water, she dumped her hands in it once, then activated the Mediator form—if she wanted to heal up in time, she had no other choice. At least Phasoné wanted to repair them, too.

They directed mana and Arcara to their foot, willing it to seal up and repair, and her skin fixed itself nearly twice as fast as it had before.

While she repaired herself, she glanced at Glade and the aide. “I got in one hit. It won’t be enough. Next round, I’ll need to get more hits.”

“He still thinks you are trying to win,” Glade said. “Use that. He directs his attention to Wards when he thinks you will hit him. Leverage your speed to feign bows, then go for the axe. It is the only way.”