The next day, Rieren was rather keen on attending the battle between Essalina and Astosind. She was especially looking forward to seeing the look on the Arteroth scion’s face. Rieren defeating her teammate had to have her twisting everything into knots internally.
Rieren was a little disappointed that she didn’t seem too upset when she appeared in the arena. Her face was grim, set with resolute purpose. She was here to win and nothing more.
Astosind himself had prepared for the battle by donning a set of heavy armour adorned with horns on the shoulders. He had his meteor hammer, swinging one end almost lazily, though it was still threatening all the same. Astosind didn’t pause his swinging even when he was talking to the match official or with Essalina.
“Please give a warm welcome to our competitors for the day,” the commentator said. “Astosind Erv and Essalina Arteroth!”
The crowd greeted both competitors with raucous applause and cheers. They were probably happy that neither were disgusting monsters who would douse them with water. Whoever won between those two, the spectators would be happy.
Once the match official retreated far enough, he and the commentator once more yelled out together for the match to begin.
Neither combatant held anything back, nor did they waste a second getting things underway. Astosind rushed across the field, throwing one end of his metro hammer at his opponent.
Meanwhile, Essalina’s black-gold flames had flared to life, forming a cape flying off her back and wreathing her long greatsword in with a burning hue. It seemed she was aware of Astosind’s strange powers of manipulating gravity. She deftly avoided the meteor hammer and attempted to counter with her own vicious slice.
Astosind dodged that with surprising speed. A deep purplish glow had encased his hands and his meteor hammer, including the length of the chain between the two heads of the weapon. When Essalina struck again, he made sure to block with the chain’s length.
At the contact, a bit of the purplish glow flitted off his meteor hammer and entered Essalina’s sword. But she wasn’t affected. She didn’t fly up and lose her footing as Rieren had expected. Instead, there was a shattering sound as the flames around her sword crumbled. Then Essalina struck again. And again. And again.
Every block from Astosind was accompanied another burst of violet energy inserting itself into his opponent’s weapon. But it wasn’t working. The flames around Essalina’s blade kept shattering over and over.
Rieren frowned. What was going on?
“One would think the defeat of her companion would rattle her,” the Stifling Nebula said beside her. “But it seems that harridan is as ruthless and uncompromising as ever.”
The monster spoke with a surprising familiarity. Rieren wondered if it had faced Essalina before, or if it was simply commenting after observing the Arteroth scion’s previous battle.
Essalina was now gaining the upper hand in her bout. Astosind was being pushed back, step by step. He tried to separate away and get some room, possibly in order to try a different strategy, but Essalina was giving him no space at all. Her assault was relentless. Overbearing. Impossible to stop, thanks to that skill of hers that raised her strength with consecutive blows.
At one point, Astosind seemed to give up. He stopped blocking. When one of Essalina’s blows landed on him, he let his meteor hammer fly straight into the air while he himself was bashed back.
Essalina thought to pursue, but she hesitated. The meteor hammers were acting strange. As they rose in the air, they began moving as though they were imbued with a life of their own. One end of the meteor hammer paused in mid-air as though it was being held by invisible hands almost thirty paces in the air. The other one started swinging this way and that, like a pendulum.
At the same time, Astosind, who had survived Essalina’s blow, had activated the greater power of his Domain. The purple glow was spreading over the ground, cracking the earth and sending dirt into the sky.
But that wasn’t all. With the way the whole field was shaking, Rieren was starting to think—no, she didn’t have to think. Astosind proved her suspicions right when entire banks of earth started lifting off the field on their own, hovering higher and higher in the air. Reaching for the sky.
Essalina wasn’t impressed. She summoned her flames from her Domain, letting them explode and destroy the rising earth before they could climb very high.
And through the explosions, she charged for her opponent. Her cape had transformed into a jet stream of black-gold flames, shooting her forward as though she was attached to a ballista bolt.
Astosind was already out of her way. Where the ground he had ensorcelled with his Domain’s touch had failed to ascend, he himself had floated into the air, reaching almost the same height as his meteor hammer.
Essalina came to a quick stop and changed direction. She shot straight up.
But once more, she never reached her target. In her single-minded bid to close the distance, she had forgotten the meteor hammer swinging on its own.
Whatever it had been doing before, it now shot straight at Essalina, slamming into her just before she could get within striking distance of Astosind. Essalina was flung back to hit the ground hard. She recovered quickly, of course. Ready once more to resume her charge.
Astosind had used the tiny time he had gotten to land on the other side of the arena, however. Then he used a skill Rieren hadn’t seen before. A spike of violet energy burs from his hand, like a javelin. But he didn’t throw it directly. Instead, he slashed it before him in a wide arc, and a whole array of amethyst spears flew in Essalina’s direction.
He had to know it wasn’t going to work. Essalina’s cape shot forward sinuously on its own, swatting them out of the air. Then she resumed her charge. This time, she managed to evade the meteor hammer swinging in from above her.
Fooling Essalina with the same trick twice? Not so easy, from Rieren’s experience.
Their battle turned more furious at close quarters. Essalina’s strikes weren’t getting past Astosind’s armoured blocks. That metal was clearly reinforced with Essence. But Essalina was also relying on that skill of hers that built up her strength with every blow she landed, and that was pushing Astosind back.
The gravity powers weren’t working on Essalina. Every time the purple glow got a hold of her, all she had to do was shatter her Essence armour and then craft a new one instantly.
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Left with no other choice, Astosind resorted to breaking the battleground itself. The earth around the combatants cracked and began to rise.
Of course, Essalina was ready to counter with her Domain’s flames, little detonations that rocked Astosind as well. But for one, it had broken Essalina’s sequence of blows that had nearly overwhelmed Astosind. For another, it had thrown up an obscuring cloud, one that prevented Essalina from seeing when the meteor hammer flew in to strike her again.
Rieren actually shook her head at how little effect the strike had. Essalina was back up almost instantly, rushing at her opponent with unrelenting aggression.
But Astosind surprised her again. More of the ground rose up just as Essalina reached him. She crashed into the dirt, breaking past and through in a second. But she had been slowed just enough for Astosind to prepare a purple-wreathed fist and punch her in the guts with it.
Essalina was thrown back again. When the meteor hammer came flying in once more, she dodged it. Then she resumed her charge at Astosind.
“Such brutish resolve,” the Stifling Nebula said. “At this rate, the battle will go on forever.”
Rieren shook her head. Astosind was nowhere near as powerful as Essalina. He had simply come better prepared. But he was running out of tricks to use and Essalina was getting more and more annoyed. A combination that was going to spell his defeat.
As was proven a moment later.
Essalina had already countered Astosind’s Domain-powered moves. Every time any piece of the battlefield tried to rise, Essalina’s flames destroyed it. The floating meteor hammer was stuck too. She had sent out her cape to catch it and wrap itself around the chain, holding it in place.
Now, the only thing left was breaking through his defence. The armour was proving a mighty barrier against her, even with her skill raising the power behind her every blow. Except for one spot.
When Essalina had aimed for an overhead slash, Astosind had desperately swerved his head away from the blow to let his shoulder take the brunt of the impact.
A mistake. A tell that clear was like blood in the water for a shark like Essalina. Even at this distance, Rieren could almost see the fierce grin stretching across the Arteroth scion’s face.
The long greatsword dropped to the ground. Essalina got up close. So close that Astosind could no longer use his hands for anything at all.
For she had begun to smash her own head against his.
Astosind was so shocked, he had no real response to it. He tried to desperately, instinctively push Essalina away. But she held herself close, her hands gripping his own and locking him into position.
The blows were hard. And fast. Every hit reverberated like the gong of a bell. They made Essalina’s Essence armour crack over her face, but she regenerated it as she drew her head back. Then she slammed forward again. Each hit dented the helm a little bit until the whole thing began caving.
On her final blow, blood spurted from the gaps in the helm. Something had broken. As Essalina finally let go of Astosind, he swayed on his feet for a moment before falling back senseless.
“Our winner!” the commentator said a moment later after the match official had confirmed that Astosind had been knocked out cold. “Essalina Arteroth!”
The crowd went ballistic. They cheered and yelled like they themselves had beaten Astosind over the head with their own thick skulls. Well, Rieren could understand their reaction to some extent. The spectators wanted entertainment, and Essalina had certainly delivered.
“That was… more barbaric than I was expecting,” the Stifling Nebula said.
Rieren was tempted to retort that the monster was one to talk, but that would have been rude. “I enjoyed it.”
With the match over, Rieren headed back to her glen. She might have lingered, perhaps to catch Essalina’s eye personally, but there was no point. When the Arteroth scion had looked up after conquering her foe, she had looked triumphant. Happy. Any negative feelings at Naviel’s loss were gone. For now, at least.
But before she could leave the arena entirely, she was accosted by a monster.
“Destroyer,” the Arisen said. Rieren wasn’t certain how to describe it other than simply thinking of it as a golden Aetherian fused over the bones of a Gravemark Puppeteer.
“Yes?” Rieren asked.
“I request your assistance.”
She didn’t need to think long to figure out what it meant. “You want me to tell you everything I know to help you with your upcoming match, is it?”
“Correct, Destroyer. Everything I need to claim my victory.”
Monsters didn’t tend to show emotions on their face much. They weren’t expressive in the same way humans were. Not physiologically, at least. But Rieren had no trouble feeling the criticality from the creature before her, like it was testing her. She understood how and why, of course.
Tomorrow’s match would be Amalyse’s, and she was facing a monster. This monster. It was also known that Rieren was Amalyse’s friend, something this Arisen was apparently aware of.
As such, it was administering this test of sorts to see where her loyalty lay. So rude.
“You already know much of what I could tell you,” Rieren said.
“But you can tell me nothing more?”
“I can tell you that Amalyse will use her crimson weapons and her fire Aspect. I can tell you that she is resourceful and tough. You will not be claiming any easy victories. But anything further than that, I cannot say. Those were the only things I personally observed.”
The Arisen looked at her with undisguised disappointment. It radiated off the monster’s body like heat from an oven. “Then it seems I must work for my victory more than I had thought I’d have to…”
Rieren shook her head. “Follow me.”
Clearly intrigued, the monster kept up with her. Once they began leaving the grounds behind did it start to recognize where they were going. That made it follow her more closely.
“For your battle,” Rieren said, turning to face the Arisen and drawing out her sword. “You know enough to go on with. What remains is how well you can execute your abilities to take down a strong opponent.”
“Which is where this practice comes in, yes?”
Rieren nodded. “Show me what you are capable of.” She smiled in challenge. “As usual, discard any notions of holding back. Otherwise, forget about even coming close to me.”
The Arisen flashed at her. Their mock battle was furious and intense, the noise from it drawing the attention of other monsters into the area. They all stood back and watched the sparring session.
Rieren was certainly challenged. The Arisen summoned bursts of golden power, flashed at her with earth-scorching speed, hammered her with blows that struck like a mountain that had come alive to pummel her to the ground. It took her at her word at holding nothing back, just as they had done in all their sparring sessions.
The monster only started flagging in fatigue after half an hour of non-stop fighting.
“How was that, Destroyer?” it asked, its great chest heaving a little and its shoulders trembling like it had been carrying an enormous weight for ages. “Do you think I can win?”
Rieren bent her neck to either side. No satisfying cracks accompanied the motion, which was a bit disappointing. “I believe you have what it takes to win tomorrow, yes.”
“And yet, I didn’t come close to troubling you, did I?”
Rieren laughed softly. “I said you could win tomorrow. Not that you could win against me.”
“Are you the strongest in this tournament, Destroyer?” another monster asked.
“That is an odd question. If only I had the ability to measure everyone’s strength with a string or something.”
“But you must have a good idea, yes?” the Stifling Nebula said. “Some approximation of where you stand. The question is intriguing. Are you, or are you not, the strongest warrior participating in the Trials of Ascendance?”
Rieren shrugged and began walking away. “The one you witnessed fighting today is an Ascendant. She is not the only one either. I have not reached the same heights. Perhaps I have what it takes to even the odds and defeat them one way or another, but in terms of pure strength, there are those in the Trials whom even I fall short against.”
“Then there is little hope for the likes of us,” the same monster who had asked the question first said.
Rieren had been about to exit, but then she paused. Her eyes took in all the remaining Abyssals, Aetherian, and Arisen left in the tournament. She saw where they came from. Their concern was borne from Rieren herself.
If they couldn’t even come close to defeating her, even after “letting loose” as they had wanted to, then what hope did they have against people like Essalina or Rykion?
Rieren turned to face them all. “The point is to fight. The point is to not surrender.” She stopped. These were monsters she was speaking with. She wasn’t going to change their minds with a rousing speech, not that she was great at them either.
But then, at least she could lay out the facts.
“I may not be the most powerful competitor at the tournament,” Rieren said. “But if you need hope, rest assured that I will win.”