The two faced off for a brief moment, emotions swelling to fill the distance between them. And if anything, the darkness and the wide, remote amphitheater ceiling above them only served to give that intensity breeding ground to spread.

“At every turn, you take the opportunity to pay up petty cash to inflicted inconveniences against me…!” Wick swiped his hand and obliterated a few other nearby wooden chairs. Yet even that small movement left him feeling stifled after his failure to shift the Ghosthound. His chest heaved with rage. Even for his tight control, he began having difficulty parsing apart which part of the anger was his own and which came from the howling madhouse he contained.

Strike, rend, break, own. The voices whispered. He sucked in a tight breath and spoke quickly, before the words could be warped by the dangerous violence he contained. “You insolent whelp. Today, I will teach you a lesson you will never forget.”

Wick jabbed a finger forward and unleashed some of that madness. The more they fought, the more they clashed, the stronger Devick’s bond between them would grow, tightening around them like a Chinese finger trap until they were pasted squeezed into the confines of a single body. For now, as the connection dug its way into their souls, it couldn’t do much. But it could convey a scalding blast of emotions-

Wick watched the smirk on the Ghosthound’s face for the moment it faltered and those emotions ripped through his psyche. Yet after seconds, nothing had changed. If anything, the shadows only swirled more actively around the Ghosthound’s left eye, despite the fire lit directly in front of him.

“You-!” Wick growled, but he cut himself off, both disgusted with the situation and the Ghosthound. Some part of him acknowledged that the Ghosthound likely wouldn’t have been able to survive this long if such a petty trick could dislodge him. Still, Wick teetered on the edge of madness, struggling to remain detached and figure out what to do next.

A word circled around his mind, using rotten teeth to gingering gnaw at the edges of his self-control. Impotent. The Ghosthound, time and time again, had made Wick feel impotent. The tricks forced upon Wick by Devick seemed somehow useless against him-

She did indeed have a weird favoritism for the Ghosthound from the first moment she heard of him, Wick’s eyes sharpened. Perhaps there is more to this connection than I thought? They share some base qualities of fickleness and obsession… could this actually be a test aimed at me?

...no matter. So long as I plunder his psyche and unearth the secrets contained there, I will find the answer. Suddenly, all of Wick’s doubts vanished, blasted apart by the purity of purpose he possessed. The time for games had clearly passed.

What remained was power and poise. For the next step, he needed to shift the balance of dominance.

Wick straightened and stretched his arms out to either side of him. His powerful image framework had been a labor of necessity, to survive in the hellish situation that Devick had crafted, but that didn’t mean it was weak. If anything, Wick only had more confidence in the powerful bindings because of how practical they were.

Forged of necessity, his copper framework had never failed him.

A blast of image power expanded rapidly away from Wick’s body. He felt the entire massive courtroom like a tingling on the back of his palm, giving him a perfect understanding of the space. Motes of copper momentarily gleamed around his person. After that blast hit the face of the Ghosthound, the smirk finally vanished from his face and he regarded Wick seriously.

Wick took several steps forward but paused when Randidly finally spoke, his voice aching with relish. “You have no idea how long I’ve waited for this.”

The anticipation and barely contained rage so closely mirrored what Wick himself felt that he couldn’t help but pause and listen.

Dark winds began to stir around the Ghosthound. The flames in front of him flickered. Wick frowned but didn’t try to suppress the display. If anything, he was just relieved that the Ghosthound finally broke his strange silence. Plus, the content of what he said strengthened the bridge between them. Due to the similarities in the emotional displays, the final conflict would come that much more quickly.

Which made it all the more important that Wick achieve some symbolic victory now before they reached the next stage.

The eyes of his subordinate remained imbalanced as the winds rose, straightening and flexing to fill the wide emptiness above them. His left remained painted with shadow and the other burned emerald. “Ever since you came to my base and killed Helen… I haven’t been able to let it go. In a way, you are right, Wick. I wasn’t strong enough to protect her. And she followed me anyway. I know that even if I would have explained the dangers beforehand, she would have stubbornly ignored my warnings… she was a better knight than I deserved.”

“You will find no disagreement from me if you begin to realize your own varied deficiencies,” Wick said coolly. Yet he was further irked as the Ghosthound continued to speak, as though he hadn’t heard Wick at all.

“Looking back, I realize that my biggest mistake was never looking at her, just at all the things she did for me.” The Ghosthound’s neck sagged forward, as though he couldn’t keep his head, weighed down as it was by the constantly accumulating shadows, aloft. “There is some truth to the fact that even now, I don’t treat the people around me with the respect and consideration they deserve. But now I’ve realized that I’m making that mistake. I can build relationships and pay my dues. I can begin to change. Yet you…”

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When the Ghosthound straightened, his entire persona had changed. The shadows had become a crystalized disc of the abyss that obscured the upper left side of his face. A strange armor shimmered across his arms and torso, angular and grey. Through the cracks in the armor, thick golden veins pulsed with obvious power. His hair turned a deep forest green and seemed to rustle with a life of its own. Two tails flicked back and forth behind his person. But the most ominous shift was the wind.

A horrible, constricting wind blasted out from the Ghosthound. It had made its circuit of the high-ceiling and now crashed down like a rockslide. The brazier in front of him fluttered and was smothered by the power of this wind. On some of the nearer observation levels, wooden chairs clacked into each other and shattered. The remnants skittered across the stone ground, desperate to get away. Right as the spectral flames sprung up along the Ghosthound’s body, Wick felt the powerful undercurrent of Nether that fueled the sudden storm.

Wick’s eyes narrowed. “Without a powerful image, you were forced to rely on outside assistance to have a chance against me, eh? Who did it? The Engraving Guild? Or even that mad Rex Family? Or… are you so desperate that you bound yourself to that skulking Nether King?”

None of these suggestions earned a flicker of emotion from the Ghosthound, but Wick supposed that might also be because the boy blazed already with emotion. Yet the lack of response set his methodical mind turning. If not from those figures, how did he discover the knowledge to create a faux-Nether Core? I do recall that there was some… strange circumstances during his time on the frontlines-

Then the Ghosthound begins to manipulate the surroundings and Wick’s mind switched tracks immediately; perhaps others wouldn’t notice it, but how could Wick, whose core tenant is tight control, misunderstand the Ghosthound’s intentions? Suddenly the whole of the courtroom got caught up in a wide pattern.

With deft touches, the Ghosthound made the screaming Nether storm a fearsome beast with long and sharp talons. More and more chairs are picked up and tossed around the room by the fickle wind as it lashed out.

Straight to business, then. Wick pressed his mouth into a line and prepared to take down this foolish youngster.

If anything, he felt a sense of relief as he witnessed the storm-beast drawing a dangerous pattern in the air. Even now, Wick remained somewhat irked by the peculiar lack of weaknesses shown by the Ghosthound. Or rather, it would be more accurate to say that the peculiar power of the Ghosthound’s physical body meant that most of the lessons Wick would like to inflict upon him wouldn’t stick. In many ways, corporeal punishment felt meaningless.

So direct attacks on his psyche it will be, Wick thought, eyeing the veritable pillar of grey spectral flames that writhed and danced above the Ghosthound’s body. The tight bindings of his image began to surge with power and he took a step forward. And this pattern is the perfect weapon to inflict them.

The Ghosthound pointed. The smallest bit of Nether snapped into existed in front of Wick. Snorting, Wick extended a hand and mobilized his image to suppress it. A coppery aura spread out-

A horrible, destructive spearhead of Nether and spectral flame flared briefly, stabbing upward and ripping through the left side of Wick’s palm. The coppery aura had been suppressed and railroaded before it even had a chance to manifest. His eyes widened, some of the howling emotions in his own heart creeping into his brain. A whisper of the madness snuck up and settled into his mind, enflaming the grey matter. With red eyes he growled at the Ghosthound and prepared a decisive counter-attack.

His impulses screamed to pounce forward and clash with the Ghosthound directly, but Wick again ignored those thoughts. The more time that passed, the more their emotions would draw them toward one another. Since he could not force the sudden communion based on the ridiculous mass of the boy, Wick needed to do this the old-fashioned way.

Instead, his eyes scanned the surroundings. The kid snapped against and another two spearheads appeared in the air and ripped at Wick’s sides. These he didn’t dare underestimate, flaring his image with more foresight and binding the spearheads just as soon as they formed. Crackling black lightning emerged from these mental wrestling matches and Wick was furious to observe that by the time his image could overpower the attack, the strike had already faded, leaving him holding nothing.

But now I see your trick. Wick’s mouth curled up like a dry old leaf. He gestured sharply and unleashed stabilizing poles of power and implacable will. They manifested as two copper spikes about two meters tall that slammed into the surroundings, disturbing the curling flows of Nether and wind.

The Ghosthound’s eyes narrowed and unleashed more flares, but with the flow restricted their power was a hollow farce of its former might. Wick laughed as he smothered these flares as soon as they were born, the noise of his amusement carried away by the wind. Immediately, the Ghosthound began making adjustments to the way his energy flowed so the copper spikes weren’t so restrictive. In addition, Wick could feel that somehow, the kid was drawing power from the clashes and making the winds more violent.

However, if you think you are capable of competing with me in patterns of dominance- Wick’s eyes flashed. He flared his image once again, even while defending himself against the barrage of Nether flares bombarding his body and the stone beneath his feet. Two more spikes of molten copper slammed into the surroundings, forming a perfect square with Randidly in the middle. Tethers of energy began to knit themselves together between the connections, trapping the Ghosthound in a cage.

“Is this really all you can manage?” Wick thundered, purposefully raising his voice to be heard over the buffeting winds. “If you believe that this is enough to avenge your shitty subordinate, you are more foolish than even I gave you credit for!”

Suddenly, waves of Nether surged out of the Ghosthound, weakening the influence Wick’s spikes had on the surrounding area. Just as Wick scowled, the winds around the kid spiraled inward, creating a new pattern. A maelstrom began to churn, rapidly growing in strength. The beast had folded itself inward and now licked outward with a thousand tongues, tasting the possibilities.

Baring his teeth, Wick waved his arms and brought down more copper spikes. “Pressuring this cage isn’t enough! You are already bound, Ghosthound. At this point… can you feel it? Do you feel the bindings tighten as you struggle? You have lost.”