"Hmm." Ikenga took a deep breath and shook his head. "Yes, you deserve to see my djinn. I retract what I said earlier. But whatever happens to you, blame yourself."

He clapped his hands together in a gesture and then called out the name of his djinn. "Gal-Iyyu!"

As the words left his mouth, the arena shook slightly. The lightning bolts approaching him slowed down before finally stopping midair as if they had been blocked by a wall.

Looking at it closely, the bolts didn't stop just like that, there was a strange smoky thing that was blocking their paths. Around the smoky thing was a red, glowing line. This strange thing had a wide diameter that enabled it to block all the lightning bolts that sought to destroy Ikenga. A powerful pol rose from it and permeated the ring. The audience narrowed their eyes and frowned. No one seemed to figure out exactly what element that was.

Some spectators began to speculate on what they thought about it. One of them said, "It looks like darkness, right?"

The other shook his head, "no, I think that djinn is a storm."

"No, please, have you ever seen a storm like that? I'm not sure but it can't be a storm. Or maybe it's a demon controlling vapor or smoke..."

He was interrupted by what just happened. "Damn!" He looked at his friend. "Look at how it absorbs the lightning around it. Only a cloud djinn can absorb lightning as far as I know."

On the ring, the strange element absorbed the lightning bolt. It started to shrink, slowly but surely.

Armad jumped backward with a frown on his face. He, like the rest of the audience, had realized that Ikenga was using cloud elements. Only the cloud could absorb lightning, it was a known fact. Armad was slowly getting how dangerous the situation was evolving.

Ikenga pointed at him. "My victory over you was decided long before you were born. Although, even if it is not written, I'll change things now. You should be proud of being among the lucky few who would die at my hands. It has been always a pride to die at the hands of Bayajidda."

Armad sighed and smiled. "Say whatever you want to say, I won't fall in this fight. Whether you have cloud or not, it doesn't matter."

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Ikenga ignored him and clapped his hands, causing the cloud to engulf all the lightning around it, and then flew toward Armad.

Armad jumped to the side and avoided it but before his feet touched the ground, the cloud took a U-turn and attacked him from behind. The wind blew around it like a torrential downpour.

Armad laid flat on the ground and the cloud passed over his head. A second later and the cloud would have engulfed him. Although it was only a cloud, the sheer intensity of pol coming from it was frightening, which made Armad realize that he shouldn't let it overtake him.

In the same way, the cloud kept coming back for him. He would dodge it and Ikenga would make it faster. It continued for a few minutes and still, Ikenga wasn't able to catch him.

As Armad jumped to and fro to avoid the clouds, he also allowed his pol to regenerate. "Twenty-one seconds to go."

But when Ikenga realized he couldn't catch him that way, he changed tactics, clapping his hands together. "Water!" He said.

The strange cloud following Armad stopped moving. It moved upward slowly until it reached about twenty feet above the ring. It then stopped and expanded, covering the top of the ring such that you could only see it if you looked up at the sky.

Armad opened his mouth and stared at it in disbelief. It was a storm cloud, deep and dark. Even as he contemplated what to do, the catastrophic flood began. Water trickled down.

Ikenga pointed at Armad, causing all the water to rain down hard on him. It covered the entire ring and Armad had no place to run to. He was surrounded by and soaked in water.

"Do you know we can have water from clouds?" Ikenga spoke arrogantly as if no one had as much pol as him in the entire seven worlds.

It didn't frighten Armad though. He thought the water would burn him or something, but there was nothing, it was just like any other water. He raised his palms and studied the moisture on his hands.

As if telling him he was wrong, he heard movements above him. But before he could even lift his head to look at it, a giant lightning bolt backed by the power of twenty years came down crushing on him. It hit him before he even thought of avoiding it, burning his body and scarring his core.

The lightning burned so deep despite being a lightning Bender himself. He could barely release enough pol to activate the lightning armor that kept his body from disintegrating.

He heard Ikenga's voice in his head, booming like the thunder that just hit him. "Do you know that clouds can give rise to lightning?" An evil smile appeared on his face as he raised his hand again and called out another Bend. "Ice Decade."

The water soaking his cloth and the one around him turned instantly to ice. The ice surrounded Armad and covered him like a blanket. He looked like an idol made of white ice from a distance. His whole body was paralyzed, his head and skin invisible.

Ikenga approached him as he stood there. "Do you know that clouds can give rise to ice?" He asked rhetorically. "I, Ikenga, will rule the seven world, and I will begin by destroying you and showing the world my power and my djinn Gal-Iyyu, the cloud djinn."

A frightening wind blew away from the audience. And they realized the Jinzidal competition had just begun.