Rieren was almost as eager to see the next day’s match between Olis and Silvas as she had been for Kalvia’s bout against Galorian. Though, the sort of sour ending to it had left a bit of a bitter taste in her mouth. Easily banished, though, thanks to how her current form dealt with emotions.
“You would rather watch this meaningless battle instead of train?” the Stifling Nebula had asked.
“I would,” Rieren said with no heat. Forget being reliant on her, the monster had now become expectant of her assistance, like she was its servant or something. She wasn’t rude about it, though. One couldn’t expect a monster to pick up the intricacies of tone and behaviour. Though… she supposed she ought to stop thinking that way about them. “You ought to as well.”
“Even when I know very well I will not be facing either of them in the future?”
“Did we not have this conversation last night?”
The Arisen made some sort of noise she couldn’t decipher. Then it left the arena altogether. Rieren frowned at its starry back, but then the commentator was yelling out the names of the competitors. The fight was about to begin. She decided to pay attention.
At least the other monsters didn’t appear as agitated as the Stifling Nebula had. They were excited to witness the match too.
The battle began before Rieren was even properly aware of it. Had the match official even managed to get out of the competitors’ way yet? Silvas and Olis were far too eager to fight. Not that she blamed them. The anticipation would have been building for quite some time. Of course they would be anxious to get it underway.
Rieren took note of the powers Olis and Silvas used. Olis, dressed in light metal armour, was using her chains. She had summoned dozens of them, all of the long metal links imbued with her ice Aspect.
Silvas had brought up his Domain in response. Sand had materialized all over the arena, turning nearly the entirety of the battlefield into a desert. It swirled around him in a sandstorm, making his sky-blue robes and the light veil over his face flap and twirl this way and that.
Olis’s chains never hit Silvas. His sand moved seemingly of its own volition, rising to block the frost-lined chains from hitting Silvas. Olis put in more power behind them, shooting them from a distance at her opponent like she was firing them from ballistae. This time, they began puncturing through the dune-like wall Silvas had erected from his desert Domain.
But she hadn’t counted on his swords.
The sand rose up to cover his hands, shifting to form artfully curved blades that resembled scimitars. He slashed them with perfect precision, shattering every chain as soon as it got within his striking range. Once more, none of Olis’s attacks reached him.
She had to pause in her relentless salvo at some point, which was when Silvas chose to counterattack.
Silvas’s sand shot at his opponent. Chunks of his summoned desert flew in geysers that were as fast as the chains Olis had used. She was able to dodge most of the attacks, of course. Though, not easily. She certainly couldn’t block them the same way Silvas had shattered her chains with ease.
At least Olis’s chains were assisting her mobility. She used them in much the way apes of a forest used vines traverse through their jungle territory, swinging from chain to chain and pulling herself forward at adept speeds.
It felt like they were at a stalemate. Olis’s chains had never reached Silvas. Meanwhile, Silvas’s sand couldn’t land a blow on his opponent.
But that was deceptive. Rieren knew Silvas’s strength. Something he displayed a moment later, when he realized that he was going to have to put a bit more effort in to claim victory in a reasonable timeframe.
Silvas raised his sand-crafted scimitars high in the air, then began slashing them with powerful blows. Mirroring his motion, gigantic versions of his two scimitars appeared out of thin air, also formed from the sand of his Domain. They followed the exact curving and slashing motions of his arms, striking at Olis too quickly and accurately for her to continue dodging.
She evaded one, then another, and was then struck head on by one of the enormous sandy swords. The rising desert swallowed her whole.
Every spectator in the arena appeared to be on their feet, yelling out at the combatants to keep going. To keep fighting and entertaining them with a blistering display of their powers.
Rieren wondered if Olis was done. Was she lost within that dune, drowning in the sand? Would Silvas let her out in time to catch her breath before she suffocated to death?
Her concerns about Olis were cut short when Olis herself burst out of the sandy prison. The crowd roared their approval. They wanted the match to continue and give them their money’s worth, and Olis, it appeared, was about to do just that.
She hadn’t just pushed herself out of the cage Silvas had constructed. Olis had emerged with her Domain summoned around her.
More chains. Of course. But she had summoned enough of the metal links that they curled in over themselves, wrapping Olis in what looked like mummifying bandages of chains while still keeping a humanoid shape. She had effectively turned herself into a chain construct.
With a yell, Olis attacked. Her new armour glowed whitish blue, ice coating the metal in seconds. She shot at Silvas with a speed that rivalled anything she had displayed so far. As she flew at her opponent, a blizzard formed around her, blowing away the sand trying to stop her. Nothing was going to prevent Olis from reaching Silvas.
He was fast too, of course. Olis struck him—or appeared to, for his body became sands and dissolved to nothing as soon as Olis’s chains touched him.
A copy. Similar to what Kalvia had used against Ledorne.
Silvas reappeared at the edge of his desert Domain. He attacked from a distance, once again using his smaller swords to control two enormous scimitars to chop them upon Olis.
But she survived the blow. The combination of the blizzard and her ice Aspect did enough to let her chain construct survive the powerful strike. Olis even powered through the rising dune to charge straight at Silvas again. A storm of chains arrowed at him, seeking to pierce him from a dozen different directions.
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Silvas’s skill as a swordsman came into play for a moment. The smaller scimitars he controlled directly with his hands almost blurred in his hands as he swung them around with incredible speed and precision. He was able to deflect every single chain that Olis fired at him.
Rieren wasn’t the only one wowed by the display. The crowd yelled their approval, cheering Silvas and his incredible prowess on.
It was an impossible sight. No matter which direction Olis’s chains came in from, no matter how many appeared to strike him at once, Silvas was ready. His scimitar slashed, tearing apart the chain before it could strike his body. Sparks flew with the sand, ice and metal shattering and flying everywhere in cold splinters.
Then Olis herself reached Silvas’s location. It was evident that her ranged attacks just weren’t going to cut it against someone like Silvas Fraile.
As such, Olis intended to crush him directly with her girthy construct wrapped around her.
It almost worked too. Silvas dodged away at the last second, but Olis gave chase. They both used skills too quickly for Rieren to tell what exactly they were, but it seemed as though Olis’s ability was increasing her speed as she chased her prey. Meanwhile, Silvas had summoned a strange, light blue glow around him.
Olis made contact, sending Silvas flying off his feet. He flew into one of his own dunes. At least the strike from Olis hadn’t been too direct. Otherwise, he would have been chopped in half.
But he was still disoriented. He had lost his balance. Olis threw her chains out in a ripping storm again, seeking to end the battle then and there.
But the blue glow around Silvas solidified an instant before Olis’s chains struck.
Swords. Real swords. Instead of two scimitars made of sand, they were now two curved blades of silvery-blue metal, glowing with a slight, sharp sheen.
Silvas’s skill was executed almost instantaneously. A skill Rieren was all too familiar with.
He struck his blades together. The resulting sound was small, yet it carried through the whole arena. And wherever it went, it sent out an accompanying slash as well.
This far out, all Rieren felt was a little ruffling of the surrounding air. She and the rest of the spectators went unharmed. The same couldn’t be said for Olis and her chains. They were far too close to Silvas.
A thousand light blue slashes popped up into existence around him. The closer one was to the source of the little sounds from his clashing blades, the more concentrated the slices became. As such, all the chains Olis had thrown at him were torn apart to thousands of tiny, frozen splinters of metal, sparks and sand raining around where Silvas stood.
Despite the powerful blitz that Olis had unleashed, he was completely fine.
Olis herself was struck with several of the slashes. They weren’t as thick and furious as her chains suffered near Silvas, but if she hadn’t had her chain construct protecting her, she would have been in trouble. As it was, she had to cover her head with her arms so that the Silvas’s blows didn’t hit her exposed face, letting the rest strike the chains covering her body.
Rieren nodded. There it was, the Silvas she really knew. He had been holding back so far, trying to judge just what Olis was capable of and whether he would be in danger if he committed too early. But the latter didn’t appear to be the case.
Olis wasn’t daunted by the display of power. She righted herself quickly, then attacked from range again. Just with a blizzard this time, instead of using physical chains.
Silvas swirled his sword around himself a couple of times, creating a funnel of sand to block the blizzard. Olis’s attack didn’t make it through at the first. The short, dusty tornado was rotating too quickly for her cold to inflict enough damage and burst through.
But then she concentrated the blizzard into a beam, and this one pierced through with a frosty explosion.
Silvas had already acted, however. Hidden behind his little desert twister, he had begun to accumulate his sand in one spot. As Olis’s concentrated blizzard beam burst through his preliminary defence, he made his gathered sand rise in a geyser, taking him with it. Rieren had to smile. Bastard had learned that trick from her, in the previous timeline.
Olis’s blizzarding beam struck the tower of sand. It began to ice over, threatening to collapse in seconds.
But that didn’t matter. All Silvas had been seeking was a bit of elevation, a perch from which he could end the battle. For the first time in the fight—probably for the first time in the tournament, as far as Rieren was aware—he decided to speak.
“You’ve proven yourself a worthy opponent, Chainseeker Stollen,” he said. His loud voice carried over the whole grounds just as his clashing swords had done. “Worthy of making me use all my effort.”
A challenge. That was a direct challenge. Was Olis smart enough to realize what Silvas was doing?
Apparently not. Just as the tower of sand began to crumble, Silvas leaped straight at his adversary. Olis didn’t budge from her position. She reinforced her chain construct around herself with her ice, calling her blizzarding beam to a halt. Then she fired another storm of chains at Silvas, intending to strike him out of mid-air.
But he was prepared. As he plummeted at Olis, he clanged his blades together in a continuous, slicing symphony. Slice after slice of his power materialized around him, tearing through Olis’s chains long before they get to within striking distance.
What was more, Silvas kept up his clashing blades as he reached his opponent’s position too.
This time, like the first chain storm, Olis was subjected to the full brunt of Silvas’s attack. It was his storm of slashes that cut through her entire chain construct, shredding to chunks and shards of metal that fell around Olis, leaving her fully undefended.
She wasn’t struck by the storm of slashes from Silvas’s blades. Likely because he didn’t want to cause her too much harm, in case one of his strikes caused her too great an injury. The fact he could control his power that precisely spoke just how strong he had already become. Still, Olis didn’t escape unscathed.
As soon as her construct was torn apart, Silvas attacked her directly. She tried to defend herself but was nowhere near fast enough. Silvas clanged his swords again, but instead of releasing another blistering salvo of sashes tearing everything apart, his swords simply crumbed to sand as they struck each other, leaving only the scimitars of packed sand in his hands.
When he hammered his blade into her guts, it hit with a powerful punching blow from his sand sword. Olis’s expression widened in pain before she crumpled to the ground.
Silvas stood over her all the while that it took for the match official to confirm that she was indeed down for the count. He ignored the commentator announcing his name with a flourish, ignored the crowd starting to chant his name, ignored even the match official trying to speak with him.
Instead, he leaned down and helped Olis back to her feet. They exchange some quiet words before the healers arrived to help Olis out, Not that she needed the assistance much. Silvas hadn’t really hurt her.
A little smile worked its way onto Rieren’s face. Silvas had always been a good man. One of the few who had his heart in the right place, regardless of what side he was on.
When Rieren left the arena, to find the Arisen, she discovered the monster was back in their little training grove, simply staring at the trees.
“Something the matter?” Rieren asked.
The Arisen turned to face her. There was a strange aura about it, like a storm caught in a bottle, a violence that was kept tightly bridled. For the moment. “Do you think I will win, Destroyer?”
“That depends on you.”
“Certainly. But what are your thoughts. Tell it to me plain. Do you think I will win?”
Rieren frowned. “Not all questions have clear-cut answers. If you hold yourself steady, apply everything we have gone over, you have a chance of securing victory, no matter how powerful your opponent is.”
“Then why is that I can never defeat you?”
“Because I know you too well. I know your powers, I know what you will do before you do it, I know how to destroy you. I am the Destroyer, am I not?” She shook her head, hiding nothing of the fact that she thought he was acting idiotic. “Your opponent tomorrow does not. That is what you must capitalize on. Do you understand me?”
The Arisen slowly turned to face her again. Its violent aura thickened around her, ready to be unleashed. “I understand. Come, Destroyer, show me how you would defeat me so.”