An excerpt from the Journal of Irsoth the Bright

What is vengeance? People consider me an expert but I still struggle with the thin line between justice and revenge. It is ironic really. The idea that the Ender wouldn't know the difference ... perhaps that shows me the truth. Maybe there is no difference. It all depends on perspective.

He walks around me in a large circle like a hunter stalking prey. Metallic skin glistens in the sunlight as it reflects a beam directly at my eyes, forcing me to blink. In that split second he disappears once more.

I throw myself onto the ground this time, not wanting to repeat my previous movements, and hear a ripping noise above me. Craning my neck backwards, I see the tail end of a massive blade of vibrating air a dozen feet above me, approximately where I would have been if I had jumped again. It moves at a blinding speed, warping the air around it with its power.

Twenty feet behind me stands the man. His brows furrow as he spots me and he begins twirling his remaining dagger. The blade dances on his fingers, reflecting a beautiful and shimmering light. It grabs at my attention and doesn’t let go, filling my head with images of breathtaking light.

The world around me slowly disappears, replaced with the series of ethereal lights. They dance across my vision and fill me with a sense of wonder. To think that a thing like this exists within this new world … it is a beauty that I never could have comprehended before.

My Willpower kicks in at that moment and the images fade into nothing more than reflecting light. All the beauty and majesty is gone, exposing the man slowly walking towards me as the dagger dances. Before he has a chance to realize that I’ve shaken off the effects of his Skill, I immediately conjure another blast of lightning.

A smell of ozone fills the air as the forked lightning leaps from my hand with a vicious roar, striking him directly in the chest. The explosion sends him tumbling backwards head over heels. Clumps of dirt and plumes of sand go flying into the air as he lands along the artificial line between the desert and plains. A crater is formed by the impact and plumes of light smoke drift upwards.

Panting from exertion, I get back onto my feet and begin backing away from the crater. The lack of a notification means that the man isn’t dead and I’m fully aware of how quick he is. My best bet is to keep my distance and allow my Well to regenerate as much as possible.

I don’t get very long, however, as the man stomps out of the crater. A large web of burns has spread out over his chest. They snake across his upper body, looking like cracked ice at the end of a long winter. Each line is comprised of charred skin that leaks blood and pus, a sickly appearance that doesn’t match with how he holds himself. His back is rigidly straight and his face holds the same emotionless expression, almost as if he hadn’t just been hit with enough voltage to kill a large animal.

What is more worrisome is the recovery that he’s already gone through during our fight. The bullet wounds from just a few moments before have already started to close up. A pale skin stretches across the holes, visibly thickening, and the blood leaking from them has slowed to a small drip.

This man must have insane regeneration.

He stands on top of the crater for a moment and then begins walking towards me. Despite the oozing burn wounds on his chest, he walks with a strong, confident gait. Each step brings him closer towards me and yet he walks on unfazed. Is he insane or is he absolute in his belief that he will defeat me?

I wait until he’s only twenty feet away from me and then I make my move. I slap my hands together and then push my palms outwards at him, almost as if I’m going to launch another sort of projectile attack.

The man dives to the side to avoid the attack that never arrives. Instead, I cast my awareness through the ground beneath us and send a surge of Earth Mana towards him. Just as he lands into a rolling dive, four large blocks of heavy stone erupt out of the ground to form a box, trapping him.

Just as I hoped, the man quickly leaps out of the box and up into the sky. He reaches around thirty feet before he begins to fall, his dagger dancing among his left hand as he stares down upon me.

I barely notice as I’m too focused on the attack shaping within my hands. A long spear of Plasma, contained by a thin layer of regular Mana and some Motion at the base of the handle, levitates a few inches above my right hand. Rivulets of sweat drip down my face as I use every ounce of my considerable Willpower to control it. I push more and more Plasma into the core of the spear until I finally reach the peak point of power that I’m able to control.

Cocking my right arm back, I throw it forward and will the Motion within to activate. The spear, launched at a decent pace from my throw, suddenly erupts with speed and lurches across the sky towards the man.

His eyes widen slightly and he begins to weave the dagger in a strange pattern. Before he has a chance to finish, the spear hits him directly in the gut and the simple shell of Mana collapses. A rod of pure plasma, roughly three inches in diameter, punches outwards and rips through his torso.

From the distance I see him begin to fall backwards, although his left arm continues to flicker through the strange pattern. It moves at a snail’s pace compared to his previous speed, but I can’t tell whether he finishes as his body falls out of my vision.

Exhausted, I fall onto one knee and begin gasping for air. That single attack used another quarter of my entire Mana Well, leaving me with roughly a third left. The problem is that my body still isn’t used to the uncontrolled manipulation of the Higher Energies. A few weeks of training was enough to teach me how to open up my mind to all the countless possibilities of free Mana manipulation but my body will need more time. A sharp pain wracks my body and I’m forced to grit my teeth to prevent myself from crying out.

Kneeling on the damaged and nearly destroyed platform, I can barely believe my eyes when the man summits the hill only a few hundred feet away from me. His other dagger is gone, and with it all the damage I managed to inflict upon him. The burns, the punched hole in his torso, the bullet wounds, they’ve all disappeared.

He looks down at me from the hill and I almost can’t believe that he’s the same person. His body has been transformed. While his skin had previously had a somewhat metallic appearance, it now looks as if it is entirely made of a silver-like metal that glistens in the sunlight. Engorged muscles of metal, easily twice the size of his previous self, strain against the constraints of the skin, exposing thick veins that web all over him. His hands also appear to have changed. Each of his fingers curves down into a sharp talon, giving them an almost dagger-like appearance.

Perhaps the starkest change is his eyes. The dead windows that looked into his empty soul are gone, replaced by glistening silver eyes of pure excitement. Intense emotion is obvious, even with his new stiff metallic appearance.

For the first time, it looks as if he is happy.

His arms spread out wide and he roars. “This is incredible! You fight like the saviors. There is no discernable pattern, no shameless tricks. No! You fight with power! I love it!” Looking me straight in the eyes, his face morphs into a pleased but strangely brutal visage. “I have been itching for a fight like this since I returned! Only the stronger of us will survive!”

Jogging towards me, he flexes his improved muscles and bellows, “Die with strength!”

Before I have the chance to react, his legs push against the hill and he flies towards me in an eruption of dirt, moving at a speed even I can barely follow. All I get is a glimpse of the hill erupting out behind him and then he’s upon me, appearing in a flash of silver. His hand of talons swipes down at me and I’m only saved by my instinctive reaction. Almost unbidden, Motion comes hurtling out of my Well and into my body, giving me the speed to dodge the swipe with only an inch to spare. Spinning around his now larger body, I place my left hand on his back and start channeling Electricity into him, using my other hand to attack from below as I form a blade of Mana.

His body whirls around incredibly quickly, faster than I can react, and a flash of silver is all I see before a fiery pain threatens to overwhelm me. I can’t see what he did, as my eyes are focused on the blade in my right hand, but it spreads outwards from my left arm and threatens to cut through the delicate balance of Effortless Presence.

Fire. Pain beyond comprehension.

In all my life I’ve never felt anything like this. It is simultaneously sharp, a stabbing pain from a single location, and blunt, a feeling of nausea that wraps me like a blanket.

Acting on instinct alone, my right hand stabs his leg with the blade and I jump backwards, flying away with all the speed my mana infused body can muster. His brow furrows upon sight of the sword but I don’t see anything more than that as I finally realize where the pain is coming from.

My left hand is completely gone, lying at the feet of my opponent a mere fifty feet away. A stump of bone and blood is all that is left and I feel myself become lightheaded at the sheer sight. The white of the bone is barely visible under the red flesh and escaping blood flow only gets worse due to my escalating heartbeat.

Before I have the chance to question what I’m doing, I bring my tremoring right hand up to the stump and conjure a controlled stream of intense fire. The smell of burning flesh accompanies a fresh wave of nearly overwhelming pain and my vision tunnels onto the man below, intense feelings of hatred and anger cutting through everything else.

The man, upon seeing my mild recovery, smirks and begins walking towards me again. He brings his hand, covered in my blood, up to his eye level and begins clenching it tightly, almost as if taunting me.

The anger and rage I feel towards him combined with the pain shatters through the thin veneer of Effortless Presence and, for the first time in our battle, I let emotion and instinct completely take over.

Walking with the arrogance of someone who believes their victory is in reach, he jaunts towards me as if he doesn’t have a care in the world.

Just as he enters within twenty feet, I snarl at him and conjure a whip of pure Plasma. The chaotic force tries to break away from my control but its attempts are nothing compared to my singular focus. Apart from killing this man, nothing in the world matters right now. I’ve gone beyond all reason, all motivation, and become a singular force of focused vengeance.

Holding the whip in my right hand, I snap it forward at him. He brings his right arm up to block the strike but I send a pulse of Motion through the whip and up into the point that then changes directions to crash down upon him. Infused with incredible speed, the plasma slices through his arm, right around the bicep. Human flesh, blood, and bone become visible for a split second before a metallic wave of the silver substance comes flashing down to cover the wound.

A flash of concern becomes visible on his face but I only respond with a snarl. He attempts to dodge backwards in another flash of incredible speed but I reach out in a way I’ve never experienced or even tried before and rob him of his motion. Moving at a fraction of his total speed, I snap the whip forward, cutting through the metal and scoring a strike on his leg. It cuts through his thigh and he stumbles onto the ground, taking a knee and stabbing the ground with his talons for balance.

Instinct and rage overwhelm any conscious thought about sparing him and I begin crashing the whip up and down upon him. Trapped underneath strike after strike of pure plasma, the man can’t move without fear of losing another limb. Of course, that decision leaves him open to lighter strikes and I take advantage of it. Within seconds his back is covered in a dozen different plasma burns, cutting through the metallic skin and exposing the skin underneath.

Without giving him a second’s rest, I dissipate the whip and raise my right hand into a fist above my head. Pulling nearly everything I can from my Well, I almost instantly form a giant ball of condensed plasma. I fill it with all the emotion and frustration within me and then slam my fist on the ground.

Following the trajectory of my fist, the ball comes crashing down on the weakened man, who, in the second or two that passed while I was forming the attack, looks up at me in sheer euphoria. It is almost as if, at the last second before the plasma hits him, he sees something that fills him with a sense of wonderment.

That all disappears as the condensed plasma hits him and rips his entire body apart. Clouds of smoke, combined with the smell of burning flesh and hair, rise off of his body and I see his eyes slowly dim, accompanied by a pleased smile on his face.

A feeling of extreme exhaustion begins to overwhelm me right as the familiar ding finally rings, a notification blooming into vision.

Congratulations Candidate of Everwall! You have completed the Trial of Justice, avenging the crime that had been committed. You are an arbiter of justice, a conduit of vengeance. You are the [2nd] Candidate to complete this Trial.

The Trial of the Tournament will commence in Two Earth Weeks. Ready and prepare yourself as best you can. The Final Stage of the Primus Trials has begun.

Looking down at my stump of a hand, the pain rises into the forefront and I begin to scream. After a few seconds, I pass out.