Unity swore for the tenth time as winds clipped his ankle, spinning him half around mid-dive and twisting his head into another stone. Stars danced in his sight as it split against the bone, leaving his head numb and thoughts scattered. Solidifying only when he finished rolling away.

He was on his feet in an instant, but the winds were faster. Stronger.

Again he flew, thrashing mid air as if he might wrestle free of gravity itself. Unity landed hard, back first and with a force to drive the breath from him. He bounced twice before stopping, lying still and coughing.

A reprieve followed that, punctuated by the wafting of a staff through air as the boy gathered winds like bugs in a net. Unity could have reached him, had he attacked then. He knew he could have.

Yet instead he lay where he was, coughing and groaning. Insides burning and skin throbbing where it had broken against stone. Pain leaving him impotent even in the face of victory, struggling just to keep a hand on his magic.

His body betraying him again.

“Do you remember me?” The boy asked, voice reaching Unity easily through the roaring elements. The question was surprising enough that he didn’t answer immediately, didn’t seize the chance where he saw it.

“No matter.” Bim shrugged.

Unity stood just in time to be hurled from his feet instead of his stomach. He spun so violently that the motion actually left him sick, then stopped as his ribs met a boulder.

He fell, coughed. Writhed on the ground and gasped for the air that had been forced from him so torturously.

Stared as his enemy neared.

Astra’s elbow struck Amelia’s cheek perfectly enough to switch their expressions. The girl grunted, took a step back and loosened her grip on Astra’s wrist. Just enough for her to snatch it free.

Amelia moved without delay, pursuing Astra as she backed off and denying her all the distance she’d hoped to gain. Punches joined the chase, barely held at bay and demanding a price of pain for each one stopped.

A boulder stopped her retreat, and Astra gasped as a steel-dense fist rattled against ribs.

She folded over, cried out at the flame hatching in her side and feeling the strength leached from her muscles. Amelia didn’t wait for Astra to recover, merely closed impossibly strong fingers tight around her collar and turned. Overcoming the anchor of her magic with a single arm and hurling her like a javelin.

There was just time enough to be awed by her strength before the ground’s embrace, exchanging momentum for pain. She lay gasping and sputtering. Ichor streaming from her nose where the fall had seen it flattened and snapped.

Fighting the pain, she stood. Turned to see Amelia approaching at a walk, felt her blood boil at the girl’s face.

Still fucking smiling.

A roar reached Astra’s ears, low and feral enough that she took moments to realise it came form her. A cry of battle, loosed as if to give rhythm for her charging feet. Amelia’s grin widened as she met the attack.

Crow reached out, snagging Faroah’s clothes the moment he could and pulling himself forwards. The boy’s attire was almost thick as canvas. It held admirably against a mystic’s strength, tearing only after its wearer was overtaken.

The boy cursed, and Neramis filled Crow’s thoughts just in time to show him his grab answered with another. He stopped himself in an instant, bucking his knees and planting his feet as his run halted.

Faroah hit gut first, folding over and flattening against the ground. Crow was thrown back by the clash, turning his stumble into a sprint with luck as much as skill- taking off at as fast a pace as he’d ever managed.

Closing on the golden sphere in only moments.

It almost slipped from his grip, so slick with water was it. Crow tightened his hands around the prize to keep it pinned, a grin sprouting across him as he held it. Whatever force had kept it ahead proving wholly unable to break a mystic’s hold.

Crow ran as if chased by a butcher, not daring to look back.

Astra’s shin struck Amelia like a hammer, passing beneath the girl’s guard, under her ribs and landing as cleanly against her liver as any blow she’d thrown in her life. It might have brought Crow to his knees, certainly would have floored Astra.

Amelia merely grunted, buckled slightly under the impact. Then recovered and lunged before Astra’s leg was even back to the ground.

Her attack was like a pack of dogs; all savagery and swiftness, wildness and strength. Cutaris given form, distilled to a single feral being.

Untargeted and thoughtless though her movements were, Astra was hard pressed to keep ahead of them. Speed and power proving enough of a nemesis on their own.

She sidestepped, ducking a great kick and diving into a roll. Then lashed out with her own leg the moment she stood again. Astra’s heel crunched into the side of her enemy’s head, sending her stumbling even as the hammering limb protested.

She ignored it, moved in and furthered the attack. Her fists rebound from the girl like rain.

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Amelia straightened, clarity returning to her eyes and haste to her body. She slapped one blow aside, stepped back to evade another, then stole the offensive for herself.

Astra realised then how lightly she’d been taken before. Amelia’s speed was of a demon, her strength of a giant. The girl’s arms moved like whipstrikes, fast enough that their wakes held empty space visible for a moment before new rain fell to replace the shattered drops.

She made a wall of her arms, then felt it crumble as if before cannonfire. Amelia still smiled, almost mocking Astra’s pain with her glee.

I’ll lose. She realised, feeling the guts drop out of her at the thought. If I fight like this, I’ll lose. There’s no helping it.

It steeled her to admit, like the touch of Utalis. Amelia’s strikes continued, and Astra weathered them as she felt for the rest of her magic. Then waited for her chance.

Another blow fell like the Goddess’s own wrath, throwing Astra paces from the girl. She flew just as a gate opened in her path, enveloped fully by the light and emerging from its twin ten paces above. Already moving downward, gravity dragged her ever faster. Straight for the girl’s head.

She landed hard, knee crunching into one of Amelia’s shoulders and pushing her to a kneel as Astra tumbled sideways. They rose as one.

The girl was dazed enough to miss twice before Astra fled again, emerging from a new gate at her back and bringing a heel up to meet her spine. She turned like a whirlwind, but Astra was beyond reach by the time her fists thrashed. Another gate already prepared as Amelia rushed after.

She hit the girl time and time again, not bothering to slow herself with careful aim. Trusting in quantity to surpass quality. Still her enemy fought, moved unimpeded as if her resilience were without end. Astra knew better than to fear as much. Eventually she’d fall.

Her confidence grew, fear and melting to surety. Every impact reinforcing the change, Amelia’s pain turning to her courage.

Then she caught sight of the girl’s face once more, just a glimpse flashing before she plunged herself back into a gate.

Barely long enough to see the smile still unwavering.

Unity hurled a stone with as much strength as he could muster, watched it whistle towards the boy straight and true like a sling bullet. Bim saw it in time, twisting aside to let it sail past him. Beckoned winds faltering as his concentration broke.

The opening was brief, but long enough for Unity to close in with a sprint. He felt Atirstam coil around his fingers as if eager for the touch of Bim’s flesh, reached out and leapt the last yard for him. Barely missed as his enemy dropped down, cracking the staff across his shins and sending him overshooting into a roll.

He was up in an instant, moving in time with Bim. Charge halted by the first gust his enemy threw back, then reversed entirely as the second cast him from the ground.

Something caught the flesh above Unity’s spine as he rolled, sharper and harder than any of the stones he’d yet been scraped against. It tore him with no less ease than the mundane fabric, drawing blood and letting hot agony wash his skin.

The pain brought strength, drawing muscles tight around bone and dragging him to his feet heedless of protesting meat. Unity had to fight the urge to attack, stifle the growling of Cutaris as it compounded the raking coals at his back. His delay seemed to give Bim pause.

“I don’t remember you.” Unity hurried, seizing his chance.

The boy was unreadable, emotions coated in stone.

No matter. Unity thought. Stone can be broken.

“I thought you wouldn’t.” The boy answered, sneering as he walked. Unity remained still, not missing that his enemy had brought himself closer. A dangerous mistake.

“It was in the Yelrorae Barony, in the Dumare Princedom. Do you remember that much, at least?”

“I do.” Unity answered truthfully. He’d suffered countless lectures to ensure that every backwater Barony was seared in his mind. “Near the Dusted Cliffs, if memory serves. With a great river flowing through its entirety, named about a dozen different things depending on who you asked and fed by a mountainous basin just on the Princedom’s edge.”

“You have a good memory.” The boy spat, eyes filling with hate anew. Unity recognised their danger just in time to dive back, hair and clothes snagged by the wave of air as it scattered rain above him.

He rolled to his feet, then fled from another blast. Diving one way and the other, falling, scraping and straightening back up only to flee once more. Like a rabbit running from dogs, all pretence of battle abandoned.

The wind. He snarled to himself, not daring to waste his breath on spoken words. He didn’t need to, the frustration grew plentiful in his gut with thought alone to nourish it.

Unity had felt the notorious power of elementalism first-hand already, yet he’d seen nothing of the fickle wildness that kept it from being the most common of mystic abilities. It was misfortune in its purest form that he’d fought a wind user beneath such cyclonic skies.

He continued scurrying and running, feet ever swift beneath him. Heels ever hot with the chase behind. Every turn he made was cut off a moment later, every stumbling stop pushed back into desperate motion as scything air closed in without pause.

Forked tongue still and dead in his mouth, Unity felt only fury at his own ineptitude.

The rain broke against Crow’s face as he ran, winds feeling stronger than ever. Boot leather slipped on the wet stones underfoot, and he became suddenly aware of how loud the storm was. How its roars swallowed all other noise, deafening him even as the fusilades of rain smothered his sight.

Blindness turned his desperation to terror, making Faroah a monster in Crow’s mind. Screaming at him that every stride would be the last he took uncaught.

Fear almost hid the hand as it came down on his shoulder.

Faroah’s hold broke easily, but it slowed him more easily still. Before Crow could move again he felt his legs taken by a tackle, shoulder striking the ground and air escaping him in a grunt. His hands sprang open, lunged to cover him. Faltered only when he realised the sphere had left them.

Turned to the sky, Crow’s eyes caught the rain unsheltered. It beat down ferociously, left him senseless in truth as he scrambled to his feet and stumbled to avoid falling. Vision clear only after three paces, yet revealing neither Faroah or his prize.

Crow turned. Feeling sodden hair whip across his scalp as he spun, heart roaring as if to challenge the rain. Its beats sliced time out for him, puncuating every moment lost. Every point claimed by his opponent.

Then he saw a flash of gold streaking high. Impossibly so. Piercing the dark and whipping his eyes to meet it like nails to a lodestone. Dread grew at the sight.

Faroah held the sphere, as Crow had feared, yet more striking by far was the pair of great wings suddenly at his back. Their feathers dark enough to blend near fully into the clouds, span so great that either was longer than two of the boy lying head to toe.

Both beat with a sporadic rhythm, holding the boy a dozen paces high. Far from reach.