“You should know your limitations,” Zorya shouted. “You fought bravely but it seems like you’ve reached the full extent of your capabilities. There would be no shame in giving up now.”

Elem’s face crumbled into a frown.The Unagi Master’s proposition was complete madness. She may have put his Wyvern in a precarious position but that was no reason to surrender. Even if his opponent managed to take out his Fire Summon, he could still count on his Kappa.

He sighed, feeling a sense of disappointment. He knew she was simply trying to get into his head but he had expected her to be above deploying such petty mindgames. Zorya should have known that he- just like herself- wasn’t the type to give up easily. He had worked too hard to go down without a proper fight.

His Wyvern was of the same mind. The Summon was at least as stubborn as his Kappa but unlike the mostly bad-tempered Water Summon, the Wyvern was a physical incarnation of pure rage. The fire breathing beast began jerking its long neck back and forth, trying to pry itself free from the Landshark’s death grip.

“That won’t work,,” Zorya continued. “Once my shark gets hold of something, nothing can break its bite. Your Wyvern is inside a sealed coffin.”

The Landshark increased its bite, pressing so hard that Elem could feel a stinging pain rippling through his Fire Summon’s Essence. It wouldn’t be long before the attack would be too strong to resist. If it could not break free, there was only one thing that the Wyvern could do. Elem took a deep breath, focused on the Essence-particles floating through the salty air, and then ordered his Summon to do what it did best.

“Fire plume!”

The scales on the Wyvern’s chest lit up like burning coal, its glow spreading across the creature’s neck until it reached its mouth.

A flash lit up the battlefield, instantly followed by an explosion of flames.

“Bite it’s head off!” Zorya shouted, her voice laced with frustration. Her shark immediately obeyed. It weathered the inferno and clenched its jaws with every muscle in its body.

A cracking sound pierced through the air and the Wyvern’s body immediately went limp. Elem left his summoning trance in a daze, feeling as if he had just woken up from a strange dream. He was unsure how the Landshark had been able to power through the sea of flames and could only watch as his Fire Summon disintegrated into thin air.

However, Zorya’s Summon had not made it out unscathed either. Steam rose from its blackened mouth and the very air reeked of its scorched flesh. The fire had clearly inflicted substantial damage to its insides. The shark staggered back, struggling to find its footing. It then tried to balance itself by leaning on its front arms but instead collapsed to the ground with a loud thud, causing Zorya’s eyes to lose their copper glow.

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Elem chuckled, ignoring the metallic taste of blood pooling below his tongue.

He felt that the duel was already taking its toll on his body but couldn’t let himself get distracted by that. Not now. After all, the hardest portion of the battle was yet to come and he simply had to stay focused. Despite its rocky onset, the match could have gone far worse. At least they were both on their last Summon now.

“Let’s go,” he told his Kappa as he dropped back into his stance, feeling the Summon’s Essence already flow within him. “We’re almost there. Just a little more!”

After Elem’s quick incantation, the Kappa leaped from its watery vortex. Not wasting a second, the Summon directed a sassy hiss at the Unagi Master and began to angrily drum his fists against its armored chest. It clearly couldn’t wait to showcase what it was capable of.

“I Summon my ace, the Siren; dangerous beauty of the seas!” Master Zorya said, ignoring the Kappa’s demonstration.

The master had quickly gathered herself after losing the Landshark. She gracefully lifted one of her feet and then pushed her palms firmly together.Her eyes instantly turned blue and her Siren emerged from the ocean water. The being sprung to Zorya’s side of the battlefield and let out a flirtatious giggle, playfully flopping its tail as it rested its head on its palms.

Elem shuddered. The Summon seemed even more unsettling than the last time he’d seen it. He rationally knew that the Siren was rather unsightly in appearance but was somehow unable to divert his gaze from its dark eyes and corpse-like complexion as if it were a beautiful woman. It must have been an Essence fueled trick, he quickly realized; a type of lure similar to the light of an anglerfish.

“I think we should make this easier for ourselves,” Master Zorya said, gesturing at the battleworn battlefield. “We both have Water Summons, I say we fill this bath up. What do you say?”

Before she had even finished her sentence, a pair of massive waves came crashing over the battlefield’s rocky walls, almost immediately filling the stage with water.

The Kappa, preferring fresh water over the ocean, instinctively jumped onto a nearby boulder like some kind of frog. While both Summons were elementally linked to water and the Kappa was perfectly capable of swimming in seawater, it was clear that Unagi’s marine battlefield served as a natural advantage for the Siren.

“Let’s get this over with,” Elem told his Kappa, who answered with an affirmative snarl. The Summon lifted its right thigh up in the air and slammed it down with thunderous force, showing it was more than ready for a scrap.

The Kappa then sprang towards the Siren with its palms outstretched and its claws at the ready.

To Elem’s astonishment, their opponent did not even consider evading the incoming attack. Instead, the Siren decided to go on the offense and launched itself at the approaching threat. The two Summons collided at the exact center of the stage and crashed into the seawater with a dramatic splash.

As the fight raged on, the water sloshed and spattered all about the arena, making it difficult for Elem to see the slashes, punches and bites that were certainly playing out before him. With his vision obscured, he could only sense his Kappa’s adrenaline coursing through own veins and listen to its menacing hisses and growls.

“You can do it,” he mouthed softly.