I stared blankly at the other person under the light. A small, doll-like girl with onyx black hair and ruby red eyes, wearing a fancy old fashioned ball gown and smiling gently at me. Smiling just wide enough to show me the fucking FANGS she was packing.

Despite having never seen her, it was easy to figure out who she was, especially with Nat standing dumbstruck right next to her. She'd decided to extend the wish herself, since Valk was at fault, but it apparently didn't matter at this point. Because of COURSE I had to fight the Vampire. I swallowed hard, grateful for my mask since it would hide the look of absolute terror on my face.

"Hey, um...Apollyon?" I asked hoarsely. "How...mandatory, are the exhibition matches?" I wanted to give up. It would leave a bad impression, but then, so would having my spine snapped before a Vampire sucked out my marrow as if through a straw.

He hissed in discomfort, scratching the back of his head. "Completely mandatory? It's one of the conditions for entry. Everyone agreed to it when they arrived, at least from a rules standpoint." I turned to glare at him, and he gave an uncomfortable laugh. "Oh come on. What the fuck are the chances of this happening? You can't possible blame me for this."

I didn't say anything, just glared harder. We were Ascendants. Everything was always dramatic and unlikely. Fate sense might not be reliable, but most Ascendants had some small amount of it, and the pileup of all those different vaguely precognitive intuitions created a mess of complicated and dangerous nonsense that it would take a literal god with all their points in Focus to make sense of.

Sighing, I turned to Callie. "Well, upside I get to test out my new staff. If nothing else, combined with my own abilities I should be able to put up...some kind of fight. Vampire is a racial trait right? I'm guessing tons of modifiers and a couple of subskills? What should I be expecting here?"

To my shock, Zeke appeared next to me, seemingly out of nowhere. "Pretty much. Individual powers can vary. Lark himself apparently has tens of them, but the kids usually pick up one or two. That one probably has some kind of hypnosis or something. She looks like the type. That said, DO NOT blitz her head on. She'll crush you in a straight fight. Her sheer stat totals will be high into the F-ranks by now."

I winced. I'd been hoping he wouldn't say that. Nodding my thanks for the information, I stepped away from my friends and headed into the crowd. The other guests pulled back, creating a circle of empty space for us to meet in, and the tiny girl with the fanged smile practically skipped out to meet me, seemingly oblivious to any tension. She might have been a bit shorter than Callie, to be honest, though if so only barely, but somehow that only made her scarier. Like a little porcelain doll come to life to murder me. The thought made me shudder.

"Hello." She said brightly, her voice high and pleasant. "Looks like we'll be facing off against each other. I don't suppose you would mind waiting a moment while I change into something a bit less formal? I do so hate to ruin any of my dresses. Blood never washes out." I fought the urge to wince, especially when I noticed she didn't seem to be trash talking at all. She was really worried my blood would stain her clothes. Charming.

At my nod, she snapped her fingers, and a pair of twins with black hair and black dresses, both about five foot ten, melted out of the crowd. They pulled a pair of screens from their spatial rings (or conjured them I guess, but that seemed like a stretch) and set them up around her, touching a series of runes on the things so they became some sort of isolation field, then waited.

After about two minutes, she pushed the thing aside, stepping out in a set of dark leather light armor, her long hair up in a ponytail. "Thanks!" She said cheerfully. "I'll try to go easy on you for the favor." That was actually nice of her. I took up position across from her while her attendants took away the screens and cleared the way for us to fight.

"Alright." I said when we were facing each other. "Do we wait for them to tell us to start? Or is this something we decide ourselves?"

Before I could actually get an answer I heard a voice boom out the start of the fight from above. My eyes went wide, and almost on reflex I triggered Moonlit Night, State of Grace, and Double Trouble. I did NOT attack her from behind when I arrived, using State of Grace to bound backwards in case she spun to attack me.

That didn't turn out to be necessary, because the Stealth aspects of Moonlit Night hid me well enough not to be noticed, especially since she wasn't standing in the same spot by the time I finished moving, having blurred across the intervening space to my illusionary clone where she was currently shoving her clawed (where had THOSE come from) hand into its guts.

Apparently 'going easy' meant something different to me than it did to her. Sure, that wouldn't have worked on me because of my gear, but it still would have HURT. Plus she didn't know I had protection against sharp force trauma.

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Deciding that I absolutely did not want to attack this woman head on, I triggered Pit of Dispair, actually earning a squeak as the ground beneath her turned to a hole full of silt. Before she could drop all the way in though, there was an explosion of movement as she DISSOLVED INTO FUCKING BATS.

I gaped as the winged rodents congregated in a spot five feet left of my pit and reformed into an annoyed Bethany. Ok, I was starting to understand the fear everyone treated Vampires with. How did that even work? Fantasy probably. Was that a Skill? Her red eyes scoured the fog fruitlessly, lips peeled back from razor sharp fangs in an unconscious snarl of annoyance and frustration.

"I hate the sneaky ones." She snarled, stalking forward slowly to try to find me. I slipped my staff free, nervously passing it from hand to hand like a baton. My Stygian Branch was a pretty interesting weapon, and I was excited to try it out. I focused and poison fire crackled through the wood, and I stacked a Mercy Kill on just in case. A Flurry of Blows and a Marked for Death were next, and I went ahead and stuck on a triple strength tranq blow for good measure.

I waited patiently until Bethany stopped stalking around and triggered Double Trouble, appearing behind her, staff already whirling as I brought it down on the back of her skull. I wasn't fucking around here, I was sure she'd be fine, but I absolutely couldn't hold back against someone this strong. Sure enough, she seemed to sense the blow and juked to the side, causing the impact to smash into her collarbone instead of her head.

Between all the boosts, the weapon's power, and heavy hands, the blow landed hard enough that I heard bone cracking, and she howled with rage and pain as it did. I dashed away as fast as I could, knowing she would retaliate and desperately wanting to avoid being gutted by those claws.

Sadly, that was about all that happened. The poison fire was barely spreading, the tranq had done nothing at all, and from what I could see from how she carried herself the collarbone was already mending. Her Vitality must be high, which was kind of ironic for a Vampire. "You know." She said conversationally. "Not many people manage to injure me when I face them."

I gripped my staff tighter as I circled away, feeling a slight hum of energy inside it. Life energy had been absorbed, though not much. I wondered what a death energy burst would do to a Vampire, but I decided against trying it. This was an E-ranked item, the attack might kill her, even without much buildup. While that was unlikely, I did NOT want her family pissed at me, so it was better not to take the chance.

My arms were also starting to get tired. This damned thing was heavy, and I wasn't used to maneuvering it yet. I hadn't had time to train yet. I triggered Double Trouble again, deciding to try to finish this as quickly as possible. As I expected, the move wouldn't work twice. She'd twigged to the feeling of my presence last time and was waiting for it. Whirling on my with claws extended, she was therefore completely staggered when I spat a Steam Arrow into her face.

She screeched, hurling herself backwards to bat at her face, and I followed, raining down blows as hard as I could, praying it would be enough to put her down. It wasn't. I managed about ten hits before she did...something. Her eyes became brighter, the red becoming overwhelming as it flooded my vision, drowning my world in bloody light.

When it cleared, I was standing on a dark, foreboding mountain, staring up at a terrifying dark castle under a blood red moon. I looked around slowly, not moving. This...was probably that hypnosis thing Zeke mentioned. Concentrating hard, I used Eye of Revelation, focusing my soul on pushing the skill to reveal the truth of my situation.

My eyes burned as the scene around me blurred, a ghostly outline of the party returning. Showing me everything around me was just some kind of illusion. It was a jarring feeling, trying to overlap the two radically different realities I was currently viewing. Of course, that was when I realized that I'd apparently been standing there longer than I had realized, because I suddenly noticed that Moonlit Night wasn't active anymore.

As soon as I realized the skill had ended I spun, trying to find any trace of Bethany. Sadly, I was too late. Her form appeared in that strange outline in front of me and tackled me to the ground, I felt the smashing concussive blasts of her punches as she pummeled me into the floor, but I don't think she was going all out.

Finally, the whole thing ended, and she let the illusion drop as a loud voice announced my loss. I groaned, happily noting none of my bones were broken at least, though several were bruised. Not my ribs, luckily. I didn't know why but I tended to break those far too often.

Bethany stalked up and loomed over me, arms crossed as she glared down. "You're sneaky." She said judgementally. She rolled her shoulder to loosen it up. I'd dropped the poison fire when the battle ended, so she'd probably healed it up all the way by now. Suddenly, her pout turned to a grin and she stuck out a hand. "I like sneaky."

I grabbed her seemingly delicate wrist and she grabbed mine (her grip was disturbingly strong) before yanking me bodily up out of the me-shaped dent she'd left in the marble. State of Grace was still active, so I did NOT stumble as I landed like an idiot. Thankfully.

Callie hit my side a second later, squeezing me tightly and burying her face in my side. Through the bond I could feel worry, relief, and...jealousy? I almost laughed. Clearly Callie had taken Zeke's warning seriously and knew Vampires were a threat. She was nuts if she thought I'd be attracted to that monster though. Bethany scared me shitless. I still thought it was kind of cute though. Callie was by far the more attractive of the two of us (though I wasn't bad to look at), so it always secretly thrilled me when she got jealous.

Something she seemed to pick up through the bond as she pulled back and glowered at me. I just chuckled and pulled her back in for a quick hug before letting her go. Bethany was talking, and I figured ignoring the terrifying monster who could almost definitely kill me if she wanted was a bad idea. "Anyway, that was a decent fight for someone so weak. I can tell you're not far into F-rank. Impressive. You guys want to come hang with us?" Huh, well, that was one way to make an introduction.