Karma had stared at the girl for two heartbeats before calling upon her strain, then whittled away another three doing much the same. Her augmented perception and indulgently long study left no room for doubting what she saw.

She wanted to doubt it anyway, though.

Amelia was not a normal person, she’d known that upon first seeing the girl. Those pitch black eyes were more than just abnormal, they were unsettling in a way Karma couldn’t quite articulate.

Things that she couldn’t articulate were annoying, as was any form of irrationality. Her new insight into Amelia’s ability, however, may well have been worse.

It was the Blitz. A common strain, for a time, and one of the more famous ones. Granting its users the ability to increase the very potency of their magic, it caused quite a stir. Karma herself had read several records written by nobles and warriors alike who’d called it the harbinger of a new age.

Of course, the human body wasn’t made to handle any more magic than it naturally possessed. And after it came to light that using the Blitz with any significant magnitude would tear a person apart from the inside, many more books had decried it as an unnatural and abominable ability.

She watched Amelia as the girl stood there, checking for a fourth time despite herself that she was, in fact, witnessing the Blitz in action.

There was no denying it. And the only cause one might have to do so, was that the girl remained standing even with the maelstrom of magic churning away beneath her skin. Karma watched as Amelia lurched forwards, fully intending to glean as much from the bout as possible.

***

Gem could scarcely believe the change in Amelia as she shot at the orc. It seemed her body had halved in weight, such was the difference in speed. Paces disappeared under her feet like feet, and in only a heartbeat she was upon the monster.

A tempered fist swung round to meet her, taking no longer in its arc than any of the orc’s previous blows. It seemed glacial all the same, appearing to move as a snail might by contrast with its target.

The girl’s dodge was so swift, Gem’s eyes barely caught it. The strike that followed was something she only recognised as a kick by observing the position of her body as the orc toppled backwards, staring dazed.

It wasn’t staring for long. Amelia dived on top of it without hesitation, raining blows on the monster’s face as if she were working against a time limit to kill it.

Had it been a man she was pummelling, he would surely have aimed to stem the flow of impacts. Cover up, folding his body as best he could and limiting the areas that could be easily struck, just as Karma had taught Gem.

But Amelia was striking an orc, and it seemed the beast was far more interested in gifting death to others than it was in avoiding that very fate.

Rather than make any semblance of a defensive motion, the monster simply reached up and grabbed the girl’s face. Its hand was almost unbelievably big, fingers spanning farther apart than a dinner plate and easily enveloping her head past the ears.

Tendons pressed out against skin in the long, grey arm, and with a short roar the orc swung its torso around- slamming Amelia’s face downwards on a large, mossy stone lying a pace to the side of them.

Her skull proved an admirable chisel, splitting the rock thrice down the centre, and sending flakes upwards to fall like rain. Releasing its grasp, the orc rolled onto its front and began to scramble to a stand.

It got only so far as planting a single knee before Amelia, who had practically bounced back up, swung her foot into it. The tip of her boot sank into muscle like an anvil atop a mattress, and the orc began to fold over as it spluttered for air.

The moment its head lowered, she raised her leg again- lifting it so high that it was almost parallel to her torso. Gem had just enough time to be awed by the display of flexibility, then Amelia brought her foot down on the back of the creature’s neck.

Her strength was undeniable. The orc’s eyes widened, its jaw hung agape, as it was forced into the ground. Soil and grass was compressed beneath it, and the air was filled with grains of dust that were dislodged and flung free by the sudden impact.

With a roar like cannon fire, the orc dragged its face free of the earth and leapt to its feet. Gem gaped at the sheer resilience of the creature, then winced as it turned on its enemy. It swung again and again, each punch ripping through the air and sending every leaf in a dozen paces flapping against the wind.

Amelia darted back, left, right, down and up. Her agility was breathtaking, and yet it was clearly being pushed to the limit.

The flurry was poorly aimed, almost random, though there was no hesitation in it, and barely even an instant between one blow finishing and the next beginning. Gem’s eyes could scarcely tell their beginnings from their ends, even with the battle slowed down for her benefit.

What she could notice, however, was when Amelia’s defence began to break down.

First the girl was clipped on a shoulder, then a cheek. Finally a fist buried itself directly in her guts, surely driving the wind from her body even as it was hoisted a fathom in the air.

As she was lifted up like paper in the wind, Amelia reached out with both hands and gripped the orc’s head. Gem caught a flash of that same, impossibly wide grin that had started when the veins had stretched her skin like leather, and then the girl pulled down.

The tension dragged the orc’s head forwards, and did the opposite to Amelia’s lower body. Knee met mouth, and the creature’s face left shot backwards like a shot put. Blood exploded in the air, and as both combatants fell back to the ground, it drizzled upon them, fragmented shards of teeth amidst the red droplets.

Amelia was up so quickly she almost seemed to begin crawling before she’d hit the ground. On hands and knees she hurriedly dragged herself over to the orc, mounting it while it was still dazed and raining strikes of her own onto its face.

Gem saw as her legs snaked around the beast’s torso, locking together and serving to hold her in place. The orc snarled, grabbing her as it had before and straining to pull her free even amidst the downpour of blows. This time, however, she scarcely moved.

The orc’s attempt at throwing her free earned it another hammer-fist to the face. Be it the damage compiled from the dozens of other blows, or simply the fist landing perfectly, the orc’s brow caved in under the force. It howled as bone pressed down into its eye, visibly deforming the globe of jelly.

Gem’s skin crawled at the sight, her stomach feeling as though it were filled with cockroaches. And they redoubled their scurrying as Amelia brought yet another fist down, snapping the final serrated fang still left intact within the orc’s mouth.

This spurred the orc into changing tactics. Unable to dislodge the girl, it shifted its grip to seize her neck in place of her head, then reinforced the hold with its second hand. Knuckles stuck out on its hands like mountains, veins like canyons, as those gigantic fingers closed tight.

Amelia gagged at the sudden constriction, then continued striking as though nothing had happened. The orc seemed startled, its fingers laxed for a second. And even when it regained its bearings and redoubled its efforts, her fists didn’t halt.

She struck like a miner who’d caught a flash of gold, unrelenting and unhesitating. Her fists were soon drenched in blood, and yet with the amount of ichor weeping from the orc’s ruined flesh Gem had no clue how much was the beast’s, and how much the girl’s.

Purple and red began to bleed into Amelia’s face, deepening a shade a second. Her eyes of coal gave nothing away, serving as too dark a backdrop even to see their blood vessels, but Gem was sure that the capillaries running through them would have been visible on anyone else.

If she noticed her own strangulation, she clearly didn’t care. The dyeing of her skin, the crushing of her breath, none of it did so much as halt a single one of her blows. They simply continued, one after another. Rhythmic like drumming, wet like brutality.

With a raw, pained cry the orc rolled over, its torso twisting even as it dragged Amelia along with it. The girl’s legs, wrapped around a now moving axis, did nothing to halt the motion, and the next moment she had her back to the ground as the air filled with leaves, dirt and twigs.

The girl struck once again, yet her hips were pinned beneath the monster, her blows enfeebled by deprivation from strength outside her arms.

A look crossed the orc which Gem would have almost called victory, were it not unrecognisably marred by the rivers of blood and misshapen bones. It was gone an instant later, replaced by the same lust for violence and destruction that had occupied its features since the beginning of the task.

Without the ground to pin her legs in place, Amelia’s grip was quickly forced apart as the orc reached behind it. The moment it broke, the girl was swung into the air- single handed like a shortsword. She came down on a fist, and shot back with a groan.

Even as she soared backwards, the orc crashed back after her. Gem stared with horror as she realised that Amelia would find no respite, save for being transported from the stage in failure.

As the girl fell head over heels, coming to drop just in front of her enemy, the fierce creature kept her from the ground with another blow. This one sank into her ribs, launching her back and pressing her between the great predator’s arm and a slightly thinner tree.

Her back crushed the wood to splinters, and the upper parts of the trunk leaned and crashed to the ground beside her as she continued flying past it. The orc leapt over the span-high remains of the trunk, letting out a triumphant cry as it rushed after.

Amelia had just gotten to her feet when a maul-like fist cracked against her temple, throwing her back down.

She fell at the wake of another bloody rain, and before the last red droplets had finished feeding the forest floor, the orc seized her by the ankle and hoisted her back up. Its entire torso twisted, and she was pulled along with it. With a final lash of its arm and relaxation of its grip, she slammed into another tree ten paces away.

Bark exploded as she hit the tree head-first, her skull shattering out a great section from the wood. Amelia dropped to her knees, eyes wide with the look that came from a spinning head.

A kick forced her back against the wood, widening the gaping, shattered chunk lying across the ground as chips and sending a great creak resounding throughout the tree’s entire body. Leaves fell from its branches, and a shuddering moved down to the roots as the ruined trunk strained to hold it up against its weight.

Giving the girl no time to recover, the orc grabbed her again and hurriedly sprinted to yet more trees. Saplings snapped under her body as she was brought against them, and even the more aged trees were unable to repel her without losing much of their bodies in a spray of kindling.

The orc reaped the forest like wheat, making a sickle of Amelia, and it seemed the girl was unable to even muster a defence against such an unrelenting assault. Her body took the brunt of the impacts, chest, shoulders and spine, all tested against the durability of the woodlands.

Finally, after her back struck a trunk so hard Gem thought she might wrap around it like a rag, she was allowed to fall.

Amelia hit the ground face first, yet she was on her feet almost as fast. Gem caught a flash of white jutting from the sides of the girl’s body, and with dawning horror she recognised the sight of snapped ribs jutting out of skin.

The wound seemed insufficient to even inconvenience the girl, as she spun like a bolas and delivered a kick to the orc’s jaw so swiftly Gem scarcely saw it fly. Stumbling away, the orc began to straighten up. By the time it managed to do so, Amelia had already closed in once more.

Even with her body wrecked, with blood seeping from her ribs as they broke the skin in a dozen places, her face resembling the ground mincemeat more than any discernible human visage, she still grinned. Wide and mad, like a wolf licking its lips. She leapt into the air a pace from the orc, and as it brought its face forward, her forehead crunched into it.

The power difference between the two of them was evident to Gem, yet a blow like that would hurt just about anyone.

Even the orc’s strength couldn’t keep it on its feet. It fell like one of the smashed trees, casting a spray of leaves into the air as its bulk displaced them from the forest floor.

By the time its shoulders touched the soil, she had leapt up once more. And as the orc opened its shock-closed eyes, blearily beginning to sit back up, her feet slammed down onto its face, driving it back into the dirt.

Amelia didn’t wait for the orc to move again, only continued her stomping. By the time it managed to raise a glacial hand and grip her by the calf, she’d already buried its head a full span further.

She seemed to have no inclination of allowing herself to be man-handled again, as the moment the orc’s fingers tightened their hold, she leapt off with her free leg and brought her heel crunching into them. Whether by shock or simply the girl’s strength, her enemy had his grip opened wide.

Before it's hand could close once more, she was atop the beast. Her legs came around to ensnare it anew, but this time she brought herself around to one side- pinning its right arm in much the same way she had earlier. Placing herself between the orc and the ground, Amelia’s grin widened ever more as she raised her arm, then brought it down for yet another executioner’s elbow.

The orc seemed unwilling to merely allow her to strike it, and even as the blow fell it crushed its free hand into a fist as dense and hard as diamond. Knuckles crashed into Amelia’s ribs, surely robbed of their force by the angle from which the impact was delivered.

Gem couldn’t imagine such a thing making much difference, as grey flesh met white, jagged bone. The skin of Amelia’s abdomen seemed to strain and flex in response to the snapped bone being jarred underneath it, and with bated breath Gem stared, watching for the moment where the pain would hit Amelia and force apart her hold.

If she even felt anything at all, it didn’t show on her face. The girl just continued grinning. Broken teeth were visibly behind her lips, drenched in the blood pooling in her mouth. Sweat, dirt and forestry clung to her tattered hair.

She didn’t look like a human, more akin to a wild thing. Some wicked spirit of a forest, like the kind the numi worshipped.

Another elbow came down upon the orc’s face, and it was the first of many. Gem could see the protruding ribs shift with each blow, yet still Amelia continued heedless.

Did her body have no need for breath, or were its lungs simply working in spite of the agony that must surely have been fighting to paralyse them in her chest?

As the orc took ever more savage elbows, it apparently realised that its strategy wasn’t working.

The stories Gem had heard of Gol painted orcs as slow of reaction, and dim of thought. Either they were grossly inaccurate or the Sieve had found one pit of an exception, because the creature barely hesitated before gripping Amelia’s throat once more.

From the swelling of muscles and stretching of skin, it was clear the orc was trying to pull her off it as it had before. Apparently the beast hadn’t realised that such a motion would be impossible from her current position, and it strained silently for several moments even as its face continued to act the dam for the girl’s raging river of attacks.

Gem thought she caught a glint of white, visible only for a second beneath the onslaught before being quickly covered anew by the blood frothing out of the creature’s obliterated flesh. Simultaneously its hold on Amelia’s throat seemed to constrict ever further.

She continued pounding away, paying no more attention to her own asphyxiation than she did her crushed ribs. Elbows fell, skin reddened, blood pooled in blocked veins and flew from each strike.

Amelia’s entire upper body was drenched crimson, as was the orc’s. Even the ground around them had begun to discolour, as though it too were being strangled. And yet neither combatant made any sign of stopping.

Elbows fell, fingers dug in deeper, Amelia’s face grew redder and the veins in her neck bulged even more than they already did from her strange transformation. But still she smiled, and still she fought.

Impact after impact, blow after blow, heartbeat after heartbeat. Gem knew she was watching the final push, the most instrumental moments of the entire fight. Whoever could last longer, push farther, would be the victor.

Fingers, elbows and blood continued unrelentingly. It felt like minutes, though could surely not have been any more than a few seconds, before it ended. The orc’s arm dropped limply by its side, and Amelia’s grin widened as she leapt to her feet- replacing elbows with equally vicious stomps.

Gem knew many creatures too lowly or violent to be considered higher species could wield magic of some form. It was generally believed that even many animals with no overt magical abilities still had low levels of it, and according to Karma many seemingly magically inept animals would be crushed under their own weight without it.

She wondered whether the orc had been augmenting its body in a similar way. She knew there was some magic involved. It was huge, undoubtedly, but that muscle wouldn’t have let it match a mystic by itself, and it had done more than match several.

If the creature had required a constant conscious effort to sustain its strength and durability, it would have explained how quickly its head cracked open under Amelia’s boot- shattering like an egg, brains and gore spilling out like yolk.

Whatever the cause of it, the total destruction of the head seemed barely enough to satisfy Amelia.

Only when the girl had spent some seconds watching the pulverised viscera drip out and seep into the ground did she visibly relax, allowing the veins and muscles across her body to cease their monstrous pressure against her skin.

Gem would have called it caution, born from Amelia having made the orc’s mistake of leaving a wounded opponent to recover. She knew better than that, though.

She’d seen her smile.

As Amelia turned from the orc, she paused for a second. At first Gem wondered whether she was finally feeling the pain of her destroyed ribs, perhaps falling from the heights of whatever adrenal rush had numbed her to it.

There was no pain visible, though. Or rather, there wasn’t nearly enough to show on her face when it was contorted with such unnatural, sickening glee. Even now she smiled, and if it had grown a touch less wide, it was still far more untamed and feral than any human smile ever ought to have been.

Amelia took a single step back towards the mangled ruin that had been her opponent, then carefully bent over, her ribs grotesquely digging into and out of her shredded sides as she did so, and extended a hand to the minced head.

Her fingers disappeared under the ground flesh and bone fragments, shifting around for some seconds. Gem could hear no sound from it, doubtless it was too quiet for her ears, yet she could practically imagine the revolting squelch made by the displaced meat.

After only seconds of searching, Amelia straightened up with something small pinched between two of her fingers. The girl shook it slightly, sending much of the gooey viscera clinging to the item falling away, and held it up as if for a better look.

Gem’s vision closed in almost immediately, giving her a perfect view of the crystal that had been embedded in the orc’s now-obliterated forehead.