Within the dome, all is chaos and rubble. Detonate enough stone and it turns to dust, to powder, easily picked up by the thundering winds that occur in a magic bubble full of violence. The worm-kittens consume enough of reality that it’s never entirely coated in smoke, and all those that remain have senses refined enough that fogged vision doesn’t truly impede most of them- but it does add to the mess.

It’s a pity, though, about the architecture. Shrapnel flies, the sound of blades humming and screaming as they Cut the air and rip the world apart, and the seats and columns and marble of the colosseum are reduced to debris. Even with dozens of cultivators still fighting, the divine beast is more than capable of taking up attention and jumping through space to hunt the isolated, and many of its quasi-offspring take the chaos as opportunity to dig and eat their way into the floor of the space and the bodies of the fallen.

If the Aspirant and Feng Gao turned their attention to the beast, it would perish beneath a tide of powers and authority. If the tiger could break through the line of attackers and attack any one cultivator, none in the dome could best them, not even Feng Gao, if Raika’s properly sensed their strength. If any one of the groups at all turned their attention entirely to her, she would be unmade into paste before she could bite or eat or Change anything at all.

There is a sort of glorious, ephemeral peace there, in between the blades of guillotines. Not a healthy peace, or one that can be maintained, but to be free, and willful, and rebellious and just a bit mad- it is nonetheless peace of a sort.

The ax-wielding cultivator, a good eight feet tall and rippling with muscle, his weapons glowing and hovering about him, completely ignores the divine beast in favor of chasing her down. Which is perfect, honestly, best outcome she could think of. She doesn’t need to beat him; the only enemy she needs to defeat here is Feng Gao, and probably the not-tiger, but that comes later. Having a blundering madman roaring and swinging through stone and any enemy in his path works just fine as a distraction.

She ducks past a trio of Unearthly Depths sect members, all three of them turning the air to water and imbuing it with their Qi as impossible shadow and pressure fill them- and she snaps three pairs of arms before they’re done weaving their techniques, so that the water detonates all around them and sends herself and a dozen others flying about the space. She lands on the dome above, her limbs flashing with lightning and agony and magnetic repulsion- and uses all three to launch herself back down

A screech intercepts her on the way, winged feathers made of steel cutting into her armor and shedding chunks of her over the arena. She twists, grabs at whatever she can, but the beast is suited to aerial attack, and it slips past her grip, cutting her several more times before she lands. She makes it to her feet, her fuel reserves still burning bright, but an instant later something leonine with a long, winding maw that goes down half its body leaps onto her. Its body closes like a steel trap around her torso, unnaturally sharpened teeth cutting through bone into flesh, but she stays upright-

Which works against her as the bird comes back, all five of its wings flashing razor-sharp in the dust-filled air and slicing across her eyes.

Through incoming vibrations, she can feel the ax-wielder coming closer, even as her eyes are torn and her smell is overwhelmed, and she plants her feet, flexes hard to push against the jaws and loosen them a bit, and waits for the perfect moment. Fifty feet away, through the fog and more, she feels the ground tremble under his weight, hears a whistle as heavy steel is sent through the air-

And pivots, throwing the spirit beast’s body into the predicted path of the axe.

It’s imperfect, the ax glancing off, but the impact travels through the creature and it winces. Taking the opportunity, she tears her way free, more than a few fangs left embedded in her, and throws the beast straight up over her head, trying to interfere with the bird’s path.

Where there’s these two, there will be more, at least if the beast tamer is turning her full attention towards Raika. Her body moves on its own, newly-digested Qi pulled towards every damaged part and regrowing her eyes in a few seconds- but she ignores them, allows them to fully heal and become clear before she relies on them. She instead dashes blindly, stumbling over debris but moving quickly enough that she still makes it a few hundred feet in her dash towards where she remembers the beast tamer being.

Stillness is death. Only forward holds a chance of victory, even if she ends up running into a wall.

She tilts her body forward, drinking in air, and screams. She lets it be her true voice, vibrating in tune with reality- and resonating with something, something she can’t quite remember but feels so painfully familiar. She sets that aside for now, marking it but letting it be, because the scream had the effect she wanted; her eyes, now rebuilt, see an arachnid entity and a strange, many-limbed tortoise both flinch back from their approach, a multitude of the worm-kittens flailing and retreating as well. She grabs hold of the opportunity, launching herself over both and tearing a few legs off the arachnid, using the tortoise as a further jumping-off point to move upward.

The bird comes at her immediately, as any opportunistic predator would, and falls directly into her maw.

Two of its wings are torn to shreds, barely hanging on to the flesh as blacksteel fangs Sever them, and she indulges. The flavor hits her tongue, and she does not taste her blood as it cuts or the metal of its figure; instead it tastes of freedom, of razor-sharp durability ringing and singing against the air, of glowing, predatory joy at experiencing sunlight from on high.

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It hits her stomach like a bundle of knives, and she laughs, her throat entirely unsuited for it and clicking in an alien tongue instead. She falls, right behind the many-winged hawk, and looks down at the arena as she does.

The Aspirant of the Cut is slowing. There are multiple cuts along him, his blood flowing freely and his clothing, already rags, falling to tatters. Feng Gao looks mostly unharmed, but the contrast between them is starker; the Warrior realm cultivator has his teeth grit, eyes wide, violent and eager, frustrated yet thirsty for imminent victory. The Aspirant stands at his opposite, his face serene, almost joyful, as if meditating atop a peaceful lake or enjoying a pleasant bath, even as he can do little more than dodge, cuts that Sever a good hundred feet out from their source turned from so it leaves wounds only a few inches deep.

The chaos of the dust and the tiger’s multi-pronged assault slow down responses, its ability to jump through space and her own attempts at chaos leaving the defenses in disarray. The ax-wielder is at this point struggling against the leonine creature with the vast maw, hesitating to kill it outright lest he draw the beast tamer’s ire, and she sees both the wielder of crimson lightning and the cultivator of light and shadow both about to fall under a tide of worm-kittens. The only cultivators still holding their own are being forced to focus purely on defense, isolated islands of sect-colors or a few independents being overwhelmed bit by bit by the endless spawn.

And, from on high, she notices a change in the divine beast’s spawn.

As they crawl over each other in pursuit of isolated cultivators, they start to bite into and eat each other, half-blind and mewling as they consume their siblings. As they bleed, flesh and blood the color of shifting oil-rainbows, dripping neon and painful brightness, begins to fold and flow over each other, smothering them even as they continue to eat. As she falls, she sees those piles of half-eaten flesh begin to shift and move as one.

She lands hard and launches herself towards the user of crimson lightning. He survived the opening round, stood his ground against her, and she’s not looking to kill anyone besides her enemies. She sees him lose an arm, severed by the mandible-maws of the spawn, blood flying freely- and then she hits him hard enough his ribs shatter and he’s sent flying away from the combat across the stands.

And the maw turns on her.

She stares into the mass of squirming, sprawling things, once many, now one. She sees the skin of the victor of the orgiastic consumption, its skin stretched thin over muscle and flesh and glowing ruin of its siblings until it has tripled, quintupled in size. The jaws of a dozen of its siblings all snap and slobber and extend out to bite and tear and-

She breaks its jaws, tears out its throat, and pulls its struggling body close to rip out a bite of it.

It doesn’t die, even with a chunk of its chest and throat missing, but its slowed, and that’s enough.

She starts to smell more blood, hear more sounds of panic, and decides it’s time to change her focus. She’s not trying to kill the beast, she’s trying to get it to kill Feng Gao without the Aspirant being in a position to interfere. Now that the defenders are in chaos, struggling against the strengthening divine spawn, her hand is forced. Act now, or the tiger gets the advantage.

So she turns towards the brightest neon blur in the dust, the smell of blood that screams and wriggles and eats at space itself, and throws herself forward.

And is met by a paw as large as her body, swinging out from the dust to send her into a shattering impact against the ground.

Things inside her break, concussive impact making it through reactive armor and pulping the flesh inside the shell. She coughs up blood, her head swimming as her brain ricochets inside her skull, and-

The beast comes from the smoke. Its face grows from out of nothing, its body still moving a dozen yards away even as it emerges from behind a fold in space, and while it has no true face or snout or structure, that endless spiral of teeth and drooling saliva flows over her.

“Found. You. Morsel.”

She goes to move, scrambling even as vertigo screams at her-

Its paw comes back down, crushing her beneath a monument of black flesh made neon and glaring, and she hears a series of cracks and pops as her armor begins to break.

“So. Much. Meat. Such. Fresh. Life. Like A. Turtle. Without. Shell. So. Potent. But So. Weak.

“What. A Joy.”

Raika laughs, harsh and strange with its paw on her torso.

“I’m flattered, but spoken for.”

Raika turns two of her hands into long knives, stabbing up into the paw pinning her. The monster growls, but keeps the pressure even as neon blood flows down onto her-

So she bites down instead.

She rips a chunk out of its foot, and this time it yowls, a voice as human as wind through reeds is a flute whining in surprise, and she swallows flesh so vibrant it feels like it is eating away at her throat.

It hits her stomach, and her system screams.

She can feel it fighting back this time, track how the flesh struggles and writhes, and while it doesn’t win, it slows the process, making her body fight for every ounce of Qi she drags out of it- but oh, is there Qi. It sings through her in hidden tongues that whispers of impossible angles and endless color molded into flesh, molded into anatomy, and she almost loses herself to it.

And then some of the beast’s spawn start to tear into her, pulling her from leg and arm as the beast recovers, annoyingly licking its paw and then turning back to her.

Which means she has its attention now. Always lovely when things go to plan.

She struggles, tries to pull away, but both of the spawn hold tight, half-wyrm and half felinid predator, like smaller versions of the original beast. Crimson blood drips from their maws, only some of it hers, and she feels jaws that can eat stone casually, now multiplied by consumption, dig into her.

Which is fine. For all their sharpness, it is a spatial thing, different than a true Cut. She doesn’t feel the same impossible Severance where she can’t regrow something.

So she lets them bite, and when they think they have her secure and their parent’s maw is descending, she tears her own limbs off. Faster than Changing them, the price of seconds versus microseconds, she uses her additional limbs to tear off the ones holding her still and throws herself away, skittering like an animal and scrambling down towards the central arena.

The divine beast snarls in a way that sounds disturbingly like a child giggling, and dives through a fold in the smoky air to follow.