Zorya smiled, watching her Summon swiftly evade yet another of the Wyvern’s fire breath attacks. The Landshark quickly disappeared below the earth before reemerging right behind the Fire Summon and showering it with a volley of its flying teeth.
She noticed how the challenger’s Wyvern was growing frustrated. It snarled like a cornered beast, angrily slapping its tail from side to side and blowing whirls of smoke from its nostrils. Zorya could almost feel its raging Essence permeate through the air.
“Excellent,” the Unagi Master mouthed softly.
Everything was going as planned. The duel’s opening stanza may have been challenging but after the Wyvern’s initial onslaught she had successfully taken control of the match. The Landshark was simply too quick for the Wyvern and Zorya expected that it wouldn’t be long before her opponent’s beast would overcommit in an attempt to overcome their speed difference; a mistake she would gratefully take advantage of.
As she did every night, Zorya had visited her father the evening before. The old Unagi School master had been quiet during dinner, repeatedly ignoring her requests for advice. Instead, he told her that he was too tired and too weakened to even think about summoning duels but Zorya knew that wasn’t true.
They hadn’t spoken about summoning since Zorya’s previous duel, the one against Hotto. Her father had been extremely critical. He didn’t like how much she’d struggled with the challenger’s Lou Carcolh. She should have crushed that overgrown snail without breaking a sweat.
“An embarrassment,” he had called the showing.
Rather than discussing her match with Elem, Zorya’s father preferred talking about her older brother. Bruno would have easily crushed that arrogant interloper with the hooked-tail of his Isonade. After all, Bruno was the best. The fact that he had left Unagi village behind to travel the world seas didn’t seem to matter to the old man. In their father’s eyes, Bruno was a perfect summoner and Zorya knew that he saw her as nothing more than a second grade replacement.
Zorya had forgiven her brother for leaving but she had never been able to shake the idea that, somehow, she was unwanted. No matter how many summoning duels she’d win, she always felt as if she was a shepherd to a flock that only respected her out of reverence for her father. She knew for a fact that everyone would have rather seen her brother as the school’s master and she was just the girl doomed to live in the shadows of his memory.
Her solution to this predicament was to be perfect.
She trained with an iron discipline, spending her days cultivating Essence and strengthening her Summons but that wasn’t enough. Zorya also worked on crafting a facade, a meticulously crafted image of a charming but tough Summoning Master. The kind of person who the people of Unagi would have wanted her to be. A person who was always calm and collected, who never allowed others to perceive her as weak.
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Zorya stared at her opponent; Elem Eldyck was fully focused on the match. His eyes burned like suns and his hair was already soaked with sweat. Although he was a young Summoner, Elem had already proved that he was willing to go to great lengths to improve himself, a trait that Zorya knew had made him popular among Unagi’s residents. In that way the challenger was much like her brother, she had begrudgingly realized. She could never lose from a person like that.
Zorya was never going to take any chances. She had learned it was best to take matters into her own hands and leave absolutely nothing to chance. This was why she had convinced her challenger to dive into that cave and connect with his new Summon. While the Wyvern made Elem appear more formidable in the eyes of the audience, she knew that commanding a new Summon was a difficult feat that would make it harder for him to properly manage his Essence.
In addition, Zorya had sent spies after Elem to observe him as he practiced before the match. On two occasions, she had even ordered them to disguise themselves as traveling Summoners and challenge him for a match in order to figure out what battle tactics he’d been practicing. And if all that wasn’t enough, she would have another ace down her sleeve; a secret she had buried deep below her very feet.
“You won’t lose Zorya. You won’t lose. You won’t lose,” the Unagi Master told herself, quietly repeating the same mantra over and over again while casually shifting into yet another yoga-inspired cultivation stance.
Her opponent’s Wyvern disrupted her thoughts with a massive roar. She didn’t think it was possible but the Fire Summon had somehow grown even angrier. This was great, she thought. Elem was rapidly losing control over his Summon and soon his Wyvern would be exactly where she wanted.
The draconid raised itself further into the air to build up momentum and then dived back down. It wanted the Landshark and since it hadn’t been able to deal with the Earth Summon’s speed, it would simply force its way through. The challenger screamed and protested but his shouts were in vain; the Wyvern violently crashed onto the stage, indiscriminately spewing flames as it moved about. It then crawled towards one of the Landshark’s collapsed tunnels and attempted to reopen it with the sheer power of fiery breath.
Flames kept pouring into the tunnel, causing the earth to shake while a thick smokescreen began obscuring the entire battlefield. It was an impressive display of power, Zorya had to admit, but she knew that it was a waste of Essence that would eventually work in her favor.
It didn’t take long for the fire to dig its way through the ground and blow columns of flames through all of the Landshark’s previous exit points. Red light glittered in Zorya’s eyes and she smiled as her Earth Summon emerged right behind the Wyvern.
“Gotcha.”
The Landshark slammed the Wyvern to the ground with a single swipe of its tail. Then, before the Wyvern could scramble back up, the Landshark forced it back down with a series of claw strikes.
“That’s enough! Finish it!” the Unagi Master ordered, her chin high in the air.
The Landshark rushed forward, clasping its jaws around the Wyvern’s head. Its teeth dug into the Fire Summon’s scaly neck, preparing to bite its head off.