The Knight whirled her blade faster than my eyes could track. Steel flashed in crescent arcs in the sky, in arcs preternaturally grander than the length of that sword.
I thought Dionysus, whose chest the blade had pierced, would've been torn asunder. But in the blink of an eye, he had disengaged. Aside from the wound on his chest, he suffered only scratches, thin lines beaded with blood on his flawless skin.
The spears of light jutting through the clouds, which Dionysus had conjured, eroded away into glowing, fading tatters.
"Slow down," Dionysus breathed. "We can talk this out, Knight of Anomalies. Did Doublerift bribe you? What are you after?"
Sylvie glanced down at her blade. With a quick flick, she swung the blood off its mirror-polished length.
"I want you to fight for your life," she replied, a cold demand bearing neither malice nor compassion.
She charged in, stepping upon the air as though it were solid ground. A streak of cold light trailed her blade, and it clashed against an iridescent forcefield Dionysus summoned around himself. The blade glanced off, its force shearing through the air and scoring a gash into the distant clouds above. With an effortless whirl, Sylvie recovered from her swing and delivered a dozen more blows that blew through the barrier.
Dionysus retreated, sidestepped, and erected myriad constructs of multicolored light – domes and panes and stacked shields of empyrean hues. In the brief respites his defenses afforded him, he channeled blasts of raw, burning mana towards Sylvie.
The clashes of their blows filled the sky with thunderous bursts that hollowed holes in the clouds. Their movement left trails of arcane glow across the air, numerous and overlapping and intractable like the speed of lightning. Stray blasts and swings smashed nearby buildings to rubble, leveled entire city blocks.
In the Chaos, I caught a twitch from Dr. Arseniev.
He rose up slowly to his feet. He wiped the blood from his chin, and raised his sight to the battle raging above.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
He raised a hand up, his palm moving back and forth. After a moment, I realized he was tracking Dionysus's movements.
Crimson lights seeped out of the ravaged ground beneath him, and formed the pattern of a fourfold runic circle. And in his hand, he produced twin orbs of fire, one red and one black, encircling each other like binary stars.
"Weeping stagnation, perpetual cycle," he incanted. "Parallel existence of the condemned one. White cat, black box, lambda of prime uncertainty –"
Sylvie's blade sent down a slash of wind. It cleaved clean through the runic circle and carved a ravine a hundred feet long. It missed Dr. Arseniev by a hair.
The message was clear: Interfere, and die.
As the city continued to crumble beneath the weight of battle, Dr. Arseniev simply walked away.
This battle was not for him.
Just before he disappeared beyond the smoke of destruction, he turned his head skyward once more. But this time, not at Sylvie or Dionysus. I followed his sight, and spotted a break in the night sky. A warm and building glow, pushing back the darkness.
A golden shaft of light pierced down from the clouds. It struck the ground, nearly a city block away from us. The light faded, revealing a lone lady standing where it had struck.
Alice stood atop the debris and detritus, the broken and ruinous road.
She had chin-length, chestnut-brown hair that was immaculately combed. She wore a black blazer and matching dress pants, and in her grip was a slender, curved blade. She turned her head to look at the battle in the sky, and at the destruction down below. The pupils of her hazel-gray eyes bore a vague, quiet weight.
Those were the eyes that could no longer stand to watch her world crumble, and her companion pushed to his brink.
There she was, the one we had been waiting for. This battle was for her. The battle was for the warriors who built this town.
Doublerift raised an open hand toward Alice and clenched it into a fist. The space between the two of them crumpled and disappeared, as though that portion of reality were a painting folded inward upon itself. He now stood next to Alice.
Shock had no chance to color her face yet.
Doublerift seized her arm.
"I declare a PvP match, Alice the Witch."
As soon as he said those words, a harsh light drowned out the world and took us away.