She twisted aside just as she had the last pillar, dancing around it and charging at him from the east. Rajah quickly remade his barricade into a dozen thrusting lances, all aimed at her face and throat. Half struck home, none bit deep.

Amelia lunged and charged, bounced and rebound. It seemed only one in five of her attempts to wound Rajah struck home, yet each rocked the boy clear as day. His armour deforming, face flashing with pain.

Still he landed more blows of his own, and still she turned them aside. Corded stone muscle and iron bones proving greater than the desert they fought.

They were inexhaustible, Amelia chasing and Rajah fleeing. Wounds making themselves known as bruises and gashes alike.

It soon became clear that the girl’s resilience wasn’t nearly so bottomless as it seemed. Rajah’s strikes were taking their toll, making movements strained, clumsy, slow.

Amelia’s unhesitence had turned the battle to one of attrition, but the Jyptian’s defence was proving more than sufficient to overcome her fortitude. Crow knew it wouldn’t last.

A fighter like Amelia wasn’t one to let herself remain on the backfoot for long.

Sand scattered against her body, or else fell beneath thunderous strikes, and Rajah found his guard bypassed as glancing blows bruised flesh and tortured metal. Amelia remained in the rack regardless, defence ignored entirely as she focused on rushing her foe.

Moments stretched on like hours as knuckles ground against steel and sand. Crow barely caught sight of the lengthening limb ensnaring Amelia’s ankle from behind, glimpsing it only at the moment it tightened.

The girl’s hair whipped as she flipped, head colliding with the base of a jutting stalegmite. Sharpening the air with a sickening crack. Crow was relieved to see stone break where bone remained strong, Amelia standing dazed as the pillar crumbled behind her. She was only halfway to her feet when another blast of sand pushed her through what was left of it.

Splintered rock made a proscesional rug as she rolled across it, body sent spinning and flying with momentum enough to carry her almost fifty feet. She was nearly at the far wall when she stopped, coughing and groaning for the first time in the conflict, showing pain without disguise.

Rajah was already moving even before she stopped, sand gathering around him in fists and clubs, clearly meaning to end the conflict while his enemy was down.

Crow remembered the boy’s warning to him, how he’d said he wouldn’t restrain himself any longer. Watching him fight had made a terror of that memory. There was no doubt in Crow’s mind that he’d not last a minute, were they to contend while Rajah fought so unhesitantly as that.

Sand bore down on Amelia as she rose to her knees, disappearing her beneath an avalanche of stony particulates and crystalline blades. For a half dozen heartbeats she remained hidden beneath the mound, then a twisting dread took Crow’s gut as something changed within the grinding mass.

He’d not even time enough to consult Astra before sand erupted outwards, flung by Amelia’s own body as she burst free of its grip. One look confirmed Crow’s suspicions.

The girl was vascular from head to toe, teeth grit with pain, eyes glinting with a deadly focus. Air around her practically shimmering from the unending waves of magic radiating outward.

Rajah adjusted his strategy instantly, twisting hands to make weapons of his sand and bring them lurching inwards towards her. Amelia was simply too fast.

She lunged like a fencer, closing in with frightful speed and lashing out a fist aimed like a lance. Sand intersected it, moving in moments to defend its master. Moments proved too little a time for any true defence.

Amelia’s knuckles parted the barrier with a dreadful ease where they might have stopped entirely before, and Rajah was given chance to do nothing else before a second blow landed upon his steelshod gut.

He flew like a discus, sent spinning head over heels by the impact and rolling back just as his own enemy had seconds before. Amelia chased his tumbling form like a bloodhound, already near when he rose.

Rajah leapt up amid a spray of deadly, frictive debris. It scraped against Amelia’s flesh with no more effect than a breeze, not even slowing the girl as she charged.

Another barrier met another blow, breaking all the same. This time having toughness enough to truly slow the impact. Rajah reeled as the girl’s fist rocked him, but he remained standing.

Stomach at the perfect level for Amelia’s kick to crush guts against lining.

Again the boy flew, breastplate now rent apart entirely, and again Amelia gave chase. This time the flight was cut short by a wall, Jyptian rebounding from it and leaning against the jagged face as he stood.

He barely leapt aside when Amelia struck, her fist meeting the stone behind him with an almost hyaline scream. Burying itself inches deep.

A heartbeat hadn’t even passed before she was on him again, closing the fathom wide gap in the blink of an eye. Rajah struck the girl with spears and hammers, but the weapons proved barely enough to incite reaction.

The next kick met Rajah’s thickest barrier yet, piercing it all the same but missing him on the other side. He scrambled back diagonally, retreating and sidestepping at once, head clearly clouded by panic. Amelia gave the boy no time to adjust as she pressed her advantage, leaping after and lashing him with faster, lighter blows.

Rajah’s sand rose to meet each one, a thin wall forming between them, repairing by the second as Amelia drove her fists through it.

Crow recognised how flimsy the defence was, saw almost every strike rock and wound Rajah even after piercing it. The plated armour hung from his body, so ruined had it become, but he sensed it was all that kept the boy standing.

Amelia pressed her assault, a terror of battle with black eyes peeled wide and serrated teeth displayed fully in a grin. It tightened Crow’s heart to see the girl in such a state, seeming possessed by some beast from the wilds.

Rajah stumbled, buckled, cried out behind his mask of strength. Staggering a fathom every second as the assault propelled him backwards.

Crow hadn’t imagined any force on Mirandis could push him so far, but there was no denying the misery behind his struggle. The casual glee with which Amelia was inflicting it on him.

So drowning was the despair and monstrous focus that Crow almost missed a sudden glint behind Rajah’s eye, the strength bleeding in to fill his form.

Amelia struck his shoulder hard, but the barrier saw no reinforcement against her blow. Rajah grit his teeth as he staggered, face snarling defiance to his own flesh. A waving hand cast sand upwards into Amelia, an attack where she’d doubtless expected defence. The grains powering with vengeance to fill nostrils and grind against eyes.

That, at last, stunned her. Head snapping back, lids closing tight, grin disappearing beneath a strained grimace at the irritation. Amelia’s disorientation brought Rajah a second’s opportunity.

He spent it well. Sand swept the legs out beneath her, forming a pillar between them and shunting forwards with the force of a charging horse. Balance broken, the girl had nothing but mass to hold her in place as she was struck, leaving the ground almost in a blur and shooting far from her enemy.

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

She twisted in mid air, landing, impossibly, on her feet. Not missing even an instant before charging back. Rajah was ready.

Writhing limbs awaited Amelia, coiling by Rajah’s command to slice for the girl. She ducked one, caught another hard against her shoulder and stumbled. The first struck from behind before she was steady.

Rajah ducked as the girl flew over his head, turning to keep his eyes on her even while she spun. It was a wise decision, Amelia writhed mid-flight just as she had before, feet planting themselves against the side of a hanging stalectite, legs bending to absorb her momentum.

She jumped, kicking from it like it was the ground and snapping the ancient growth as she shot towards her enemy.

Forty feet proved barely any gap at all for her unearthly strength, cleared almost quicker than Crow could register. Rajah’s sand waited just as it had before, pooling between them against the ground, grinding, building and waiting. Then lashing out in a great thrusting blow arced towards the skies like a spear lance at the Goddess Herself.

Amelia might have been helpless to avoid it, flying without any surface to leverage her strength from. But the girl only grinned as space twisted around her, body contorting and narrowing to one side, impossibly slim for just half an instant as the rising blow missed her by a hair.

She met a jutting stalegmite as she flew, bursting through it like cannonfire. Rolling to stand on the other side, black eyes already wide and searching the dust-filled air for her enemy. They were met instead with his shin as Rajah kicked the girl hard, doubtless surprising her with the shift to physicality.

Amelia was flattened on her back, then seized by the sands again and thrown. She struck a wall, bounced, landed face-first and rolled to stand all with barely a scratch.

The grin didn’t leave her as she rushed back.

Crow feared the battle might kill him with tension alone. Moves and countermoves exchanged in instants, crushing blows ignored with only a scrape to show for them. Speed and strategy working at such levels that even slowed he found himself struggling to track the conflict.

He wasn’t sure how much time passed before Gem spoke.

“Rajah is going to win.” She breathed, eyes wide as she drank in the battle. Crow studied the warring mystics, trying to see if the boy had claimed any advantage that slipped his notice.

He saw no such edge. Still the Jyptian fought defensively, and still he seemed to wear more wounds with every passing second. Body deteriorating faster than Amelia’s without doubt.

“How?” Crow asked, not looking at the girl as he did. Not daring to miss even a single second for fear it would end the battle in his innattentiveness.

“Amelia haemhorrhages magic in that state.” She explained. “Impossibly quickly. Dangerously quickly, almost like an arcstock crystal. At this rate I doubt she’ll last so long as another two minutes before her reserves are drained in their entirety.”

Even as Gem said it, the girl bounced from pillars, stalegmites and walls like a richocheting roundshot. Leaping dozens of feet at a time with no effort at all. It was impossible to imagine any limit to her power.

But Gem’s a Menza. Crow reminded himself. Who am I to argue with her in matters of magic?

He felt himself leaning forth in his seat, fatigue and pain forgotten as he watched. The unfolding battle drawing all his focus.

Amelia almost seemed to respond to his thoughts as she batted aside a whip of sand, aiming to grab Rajah when he ducked beneath her flight. She merely snagged the boy, dragging him off balance as she twisted around to land just yards behind him.

Both moved as one, sand striking Amelia in a wave as she powered through it. Body bruised and blackened by Rajah’s continued assault, yet face still contorted with that terrible grin.

A fist landed unguarded and undodged in Rajah’s side, sinking between fissured metal and buckling the boy as it lifted him from his feet. Blood spurted from his gaping maw, insides ruined by that single, tectonic blow.

Rajah fell and flew at once, sand dropping to pile all around him as, for the first time, he lost control of his magic.

Amelia hesitated no longer than Crow would have expected, bulling onwards with an almost desperate haste. One look at her eyes made her eagerness clear. She fell down upon Rajah as he lay still, driving her knees down on the boy’s arms and pinning them beneath her magically anchored weight. Hands snaking round to close on his throat as she stared down at him.

She means to throttle him. Crow realised, staring with a bottomless gut. The strategy might well be effective.

It never saw execution. Rajah’s fingers twisted where he lay, and in an instant the clothing was torn across every scrap of his body.

Sand shot forth like a torrent, bursting free from every crevice in the fabric, arcing to spill out beneath the stiff plates of metal and catching Amelia entirely by surprise as it formed a bludgeoning limb to strike her throat from below.

The girl leaned back as her chin was driven upwards, body almost thrown away entirely.

Her grip remained strong against the impact, even tightening about Rajah’s throat as she continued bearing down on him. Eyes bulging with pain and surprise, but smile unwavering.

“How can Rajah beat that?” Crow asked, voice a hoarse croak. “How can anyone?”

“By buying time.” Gem answered him. “Let’s just see if he can buy enough.”

Rajah tried. By the Goddess, he tried. One attack after another assailed Amelia while she strangled him, blades and bricks, lances and lashes. Crow knew even before any fell that none would loose her grip, still recalling the stability of her grin as the alphoe rent her body beneath it.

The Jyptian struck ever more, even as his face turned red, then purple. Even as his urge for breath turned to convulsive thrashing beneath.

Crow wanted to call out for the match to end, finding the sight more than he could bear. No cheers came from the crowds around them, a deathly silence taking the stadium.

He knew why. The sight was far too reminiscent of Gem’s own fate in the second stage.

Rajah’s eyes bulged, drool leaking down his cheeks, tears wetting his face to the ears and expression twisting into a feral glare of tightened features and bared teeth.

The sand never stopped its assault on Amelia, even when Crow’s focus moved to Rajah’s face. His eyes rolled back, then. Mouth falling agape and still as his head lolled. And then, finally, Amelia relented.

Fingers spasmed for a moment as the girl weathered the latest assault, then her grip opened wide. She stared at her own hands, seemingly amazed at their disobedience as the Jyptian greedily guzzled air beneath her. For once, Rajah was the swifter of them.

Amelia rolled after he cast her off, standing rapidly. Snarling rather than smiling, body twisted around clear tender spots in its flesh where bruises swelled like tumours.

For the first time since the fight began she was still, eying Rajah cautiously, studiously. Hesitating for several, vital seconds. She moved only as he stood.

For the hundredth time the sand rose to meet her, all condensed at once to a single, numinous wall. Amelia smashed against it like waves meeting a cliff, breaking through the debris, tearing it apart with feral desperation. She made her path in moments, but Rajah crossed it first.

His fist crunched into Amelia’s nose the moment it was exposed through the sand.

Shock brought a moment’s reprieve, giving him chance to conduct the grains once more and shift his trap’s body around.

In an instant the barrier was gone. Amelia fell forwards as Rajah stepped back and formed his million tools into a great boulder above her. It dropped just as she straightened.

A roar rang out through the stage as Amelia was driven to her knees, hair tangled and knotted with granules, ground cracking where her knee fell hard. The onslaught was over in an instant, and the girl rose in a fury just as Rajah struck again with body rather than sand. Amelia seemed ready, for she slapped his blow aside with a strength that almost toppled him, twisting to answer with her own.

Rajah fell again, blood painting his teeth and tears drowning his eyes. Amelia made no effort to throttle him a second time, merely stood over the boy and raised her leg, vicious grin back in place.

She gasped just a moment before the guillotine fell, shock evident on her face. Strong enough to drain it of all other emotion.

The girl wavered for a moment, legs suddenly weak, veins retreating back into her as corded muscles relaxed. She almost seemed to fall in time with Rajah’s own, strained rise.

For a moment Crow thought the Jyptian might strike the girl, so hasty was his movement, so tight his jaw. But something stayed the boy’s hand before it fell as a fist, and he spent a moment eying her before acting.

Exhausted, wounded, driven to the brink and suddenly deprived of the magic that had given her so much strength before, Amelia took only a simple shove to knock down.

The stage began to fade almost before she’d even struck the ground. Its winner decided.