Arcturus watched Amélie close in, and raised Perdition reflexively to stop her.

Instead, a blade of compressed golden-white fire turned aside the Valkyrie’s charge, Elethea appearing in front of him in a gout of solarfire and crackling energy.

“Out of my way!” Amélie snarled. “Your title can’t protect you!”

“I don’t need protection from the likes of you, you monastic whore!” Elethea responded savagely, before throwing herself into the fight with a fury.

“Arcturus!” Leon shouted as the dueling pair’s fight took them to the side, his aetherblade ignited and raised. “Let’s end this farce!”

Blood pumped in Arcturus’ ears.

We promised. Brick by brick.

He needed the Throne.

His friends’ objections were ignored as Arcturus raced forward, past the dueling pair of the Archon and Valkyrie, to meet Leon halfway as his cousin mimicked his movement.

They met in the middle, monochrome flames clashing with crimson, and their duel began. Shorter and faster than Arcturus, Leon took the initiative in the fight almost immediately. His blade, spitting and hissing fire, swept through the air fast enough to leave streaks in Arcturus’ vision, meeting Perdition’s parries as much by Arcturus’ muscle memory as his active attempts at blocking or warding the incoming strikes.

Within the first few exchanges, his cousin had scored several hits across Arcturus’ armour, and opened a cut along his cheek.

“Too slow!” Leon decreed, slamming his foot into Arcturus’ breastplate and kicking him backwards. “No trueborn son of Titus Valoura would be so inept!”

“You sound like a storybook villain!” Arcturus retorted, before throwing himself forwards again in a vicious oberhau that he saw Leon struggle to block, the shorter and slimmer man’s expression firming into a frown as he held his aetherblade diagonally above his body to stop the strike.

Leon was faster, it seemed, but Arcturus was stronger.

The deadlock was broken when Leon flared up a pillar of flame near Arcturus’ feet, and he was forced to leap backwards to avoid it, cursing and blinking against the flash-drying of his eyes from the proximity to the fire. Leon burst through the pillar unimpeded, his red tunic and black breeches untouched by the searing heat as he brought his aetherblade to bear once more.

This time Arcturus didn’t bother parrying, instead raising a box of Telekinesis around himself and letting his cousin slam into it blade-first as [Lightfire] healed what little actual damage had been done to his eyes. He ignored the cut on his face.

He had to be careful with mana. It was sorcery that would win the contest.

Remember what you learned in the Simulacrum chamber.

With his eyes showing green again on his HUD a moment later, Arcturus dropped the box and charged Leon a half-second before his cousin did the same — only for both of them to break off and leap backwards when Amélie went hurtling between them, smashing through two statues and the remains of a brick garden wall in her uncontrolled tumble. Arcturus turned to where Amélie had come from, to find Elethea blazing past, almost flying with the speed of her [Solarian Swiftness] in pursuit of the Valkyrie.

Arcturus turned back to Leon, and the pair slammed together again a second later.

He found his instincts being pulled to the limits of their capacity as he engaged Leon, and even his advanced psionic capability was more of a balancing factor than an advantage. With its use, strikes that would have otherwise cut deep or wounded him instead deflected off of his plate with painful impacts, and where Leon might have used his superior speed to dance around him; he instead used it to stay just slightly ahead of Arcturus. Hooks of force, fists of power, and hammers of psionic energy pulled, beat, and struck Leon repeatedly at every opportune moment Arcturus could find; trying to destabilise or trip up his opponent while fending off lightning-fast stabs and probing strikes.

Where Perdition took the form of a four foot blade, thicker than a standard sword thanks to its magical nature, and capable of being wielded two-handed or one-handed: Leon’s sword was a longer and thinner weapon. It was a two-handed zweihander with a thinner-than-normal blade, perfect for swift slashes and pin-point stabs that as they fought were constantly harrying Arcturus’ defenses.

Were it not for his armour, Arcturus likely would have already been dead.

Telekinetic lances formed and smashed into Leon in the space of a heartbeat, and it still did little more than stagger his cousin. Arcturus had already been fighting. His battle with Vivienne had tapped into something primal, powerful, and mysterious — but it had also exhausted him. Adrenaline and stubborn will had driven him forward, but Arcturus was already suppressing a hoard of notifications and dealing with residual exhaustion, added onto the fact he was naturally slower and less experienced with a blade than his foe.

These factors culminated into Leon plunging his sword forward, and punching through Arcturus’ ribs.

Fight through the pain!

A snarl of pain escaped him as the aetherblade seared his flesh, though he was immediately aware — thanks to his HUD — that it had somehow missed any vital organs. Leon tore his sword out a moment later, and drew it back for another attack when he was abruptly smashed off his feet. The other man yelped as he was thrown to the ground by Andy’s sudden appearance, the Mageslayer’s knives stabbing like striking snakes at the surprised Archon.

Arcturus knew it would be ineffective, as much as Andy surely did. Arcturus raced forwards to try to rejoin the fight, only to grunt as Andy was smashed into him by a strike from Leon. He caught his friend even as doing so sent waves of agony through his injured side, snarling in defiance of the pain and arresting his backwards momentum with a wall of telekinetic force. As Leon recovered his feet, Arcturus put Andy down as gently as he could; trusting him to Danica’s eventual healing as he prepared to engage Leon again.

We need to end this.

Another wave of titanic aetherial force washed over them, and every single one of them staggered. A second later, a monstrously large figure exploded through the hedges, rolling end over end as he smashed through benches, walls, and tore up the earth before coming to a wheezing stop.

“Daddy?!”

Elethea’s shocked exclamation was drowned out by a roar of approval from dozens of throats as Leon Fortunis himself erupted into the garden. The hedges were incinerated by his passage, a flash-fire effect that reduced them to ashen wood within twenty metres of his arrival on either side. A massive gap opened up, showing the battle in front of the villa had moved back towards the main building — and what resistance remained was being steadily hemmed in around its entrance.

“Father!” Leon cried, distracting Fortunis as he stalked towards Beowulf’s groaning body.

“Leon?” The older man asked in anger and disbelief, before he was abruptly blasted off his feet by a titanic spear of compressed stone.

The Honorum Patriarch went head over heels for perhaps two metres before he arrested his impromptu flight, digging his aetherblade into the earth and carving a line of flame through it as he came to a rapid halt with. His helmet snapped to the right, and he picked his sword up faster than Arcturus could blink as a green-and-gold blur smashed into him with titanic force.

“Tylariel.” Arcturus said, as hope replaced the fear he’d felt at seeing his Uncle.

The Rubastra Heiress was a figure of ferocity and wild beauty from where she stood, her sword — very nearly a rapier — of compressed vines pressed hard against Fortunis’ blazing longsword.

“You can’t win, foolish woman!” The red-armoured Archon spat. “Your House is doomed! There are Avatars coming, Tylariel! Surrender!”

“Fuck you.” She said simply, before breaking away at blinding speed and throwing out her left hand, right hand holding her blade as she tore colossal roots from the earth and sent them at the armoured Patriarch with physics-defying speed.

What a woman.

In response, Fortunis conjured floating blades of flame; slicing apart and incinerating the vines as they sought for him, his aetherblade working rapidly to defend him from the attack in tandem to the eight blades surrounding his person. When that was done, the swords almost-instantly coalesced into a colossal flamespear, which he sent at her with a throwing motion of his right arm.

Tylariel responded with a barrier of stone, and then shattered it into spears of granite that flew for Fortunis.

He turned them to ash with a wall of superheated flame — careful not to harm his son, even still — and then followed it with a spiralling vortex of fire.

She responded with two walls of stone from the earth, and then launched Fortunis into the air with an ejection of compressed-earth spears that forced him to leap to avoid them. In response, he turned his ascent into a spin and conjured flames around his body, wrapping himself in a chrysalis of fire and abruptly exploding into downwards motion towards Tylariel.

Arcturus’ mentor thrust out her hand and propelled a massive spear of compressed vines towards the incoming Patriarch-cum-Comet and Fortunis erupted from within the cocoon of flames, landing on the vine-spear and sliding down along it; flames from his feet incinerating it behind him as he pointed his aetherblade at Tylariel.

She answered him with an explosion of granite spears, and he countered with a searing vortex of flame.

Tylariel cried out in pain and threw up a cocoon of vines, allowing Fortunis to land unmolested and turn to Leon while he maintained the stream of flames. “Get out of here, immediately, and return to the palace! Once I finish up here, we will talk about your insubordination!”

“Father, Elethea isn’t—!”

“Elethea is not your concern!”

Arcturus stared at Fortunis in frozen, stunned silence, and Archon’s eyes met his.

He saw many things in the older man’s eyes: Assessment, dislike, malice, even consideration.

What he didn’t see was surprise.

His Uncle knew.

“I’ll deal with you in a moment, bastard—”

Leon’s words were cut off with a grunt when a massive fist staggered him from behind, showing Beowulf back on his feet. “Go!” The titanic Highblade Patriarch roared. “Get out of here! We will hold hi—!”

His voice, in turn, was silenced when a golden spear punched out of his chest.

Elethea’s scream of anguish in the shocked silence that followed chilled Arcturus to the core.

“Highmaiden.” Fortunis’ voice sounded irritated. “It took you long enough to arrive.”

“The barrier proved problematic.” A cold, mellifluous voice responded. “You deal with him, as per our bargain. I will handle the Rubastra whore.”

The spear was ripped from Beowulf’s chest and the massive Duke slammed down to his knees, blood dribbling from his mouth to stain his beard. Behind him stood a woman bedecked in resplendent armour, designed to mould to the curves of her body and throw the power of her limbs into stark definition. On her back, to Arcturus’ disbelief, were a pair of wings the colour of freshly fallen snow.

Arcturus turned away from her as another pained cry filled the garden, seeing Elethea sprinting towards Beowulf. His fear for her life bade him to move, and he’d barely left his position when a wave of earth erupted beneath Elethea’s feet, throwing her backwards to be caught by the cushioning grasp of twining roots that emerged from the earth. Fortunis and the Highmaiden snapped their eyes to the cocoon and Tylariel erupted out of it, her face blackened on one side and the hair on the right side of her head burned away: But her expression, if anything, was only more ferocious.

Fortunis readied his blade, only for the Highmaiden to shove him aside, meeting Tylariel’s charge with a physics-defying explosion of speed that saw the two of them clash with a localised displacement of air.

“I’ve longed for this day, Tylariel! I’m going to enjoy killing you!”

“You talk too much, Asteria!”

Tylariel shifted in position and slammed a lightning-fast kick into the Highmaiden's armoured torso, sending her careening off to smash into the top levels of the mansion. Without a word, Tylariel erupted off the ground in pursuit.

Arcturus turned to where Beowulf was kneeling, and saw Fortunis raising his sword. Fear and adrenaline raged in his blood, and he started forwards again — only for another presence to freeze him in his place in fear.

Tiberius arrived like an arrow from the heavens, a sword of white marble sharpened to a razor’s edge gripped in his right hand. Fortunis’ snarl of anger was audible as the elder Patriarch joined the fray, and a moment later Arcturus lost sight of his uncle as Tiberius smashed Fortunis back out into the grounds in front of the villa.

“Adam!” The elder called out gravely. “Remember what I told you: He will need you to make the choice for him!”

That message delivered, Tiberius vanished as fast as he’d appeared, the earth exploding upwards as he rocketed after Fortunis.

Arcturus turned back towards Leon, and the spell that had gripped them all seemed to have been broken. In the reprieve, he’d managed to let his [Lightfire] heal the wound Leon had inflicted from an agonising impediment to a painful, glaring irritation. It was an improvement, at least. “Let’s end this, Leon.”

“With pleasure!” The prince called back.

Only for both their expectations to be subverted by Elethea slamming into the shorter man and sending him sprawling, the Highblade heiress groaning in pain as she looked around; her cheeks stained with blood from a new slash and tears for her father. Arcturus’ rage flared, and his eyes rose to where the source of her battering stood, Amélie’s silver speartip glistening with blood and her own face bearing a vicious cut from her jawline to the bottom of her left eye. The Valkyrie’s eyes abandoned Elethea, fixed on Arcturus, and with a flaring of her shimmering energy wings; she charged.

“Danica! Take care of Elethea!” Arcturus roared, before stepping forward to meet Amélie’s charge as he had intended at the very beginning of the fight. Her silver spear thrust towards him, and he turned it aside with Perdition’s edge, throwing her charge aside and spinning as she all-but flew past him bleeding velocity.

“You aren’t worthy of his name!” Amélie spat furiously as she came in again, spear stabbing forwards with precision and graced, and forcing Arcturus to react defensively. Only the lightness of his aetherblade and the lack of depreciation inherent to his level ups allowed him to keep par with her, showing exactly how incredibly advanced Amélie’s levelling truly was.

She might have even been close to Level Fifty.

“You need to listen to me!”

“Don’t talk to me with his voice! It isn’t yours to use!” She snarled.

Arcturus darted to the left and dodged a thrust at his stomach, then stepped into her guard as she pulled her spear back, backhanding the weapon with Perdition and snapping his left hand out to bind her in telekinetic chains. He hadn’t bothered trying with Leon; elemental armour provided considerable resistances to immobilisation, especially from things like psionic abilities… but Amélie was no Archon, and for all that Valkyries were incredible warriors, he’d researched them extensively with Adam’s help.

They relied on their mobility.

The chains burned through his Danica-assisted upswell of mana as they shackled onto Amélie’s arms and legs, the links locked to the air as they restricted her movement. Her strength was immense, and it took all of Arcturus’ focus to keep her restrained. Still, he took the chance to make eye contact with the girl he’d once fantasized about spending the rest of his life with. Her eyes, deep and rich, were frenzied as they stared back at him; and beyond the fervour and hateful zeal he saw there, he also had an inkling of fear.

“What are you afraid of, Amélie?”

“Shut up!” She snarled, before spitting at him.

Arcturus recoiled reflexively, and then snapped up Perdition as Amélie took advantage of his momentary lapse in focus to snap free of the chains, slashing her spear at his face. He leaned back reflexively to avoid it, and was rewarded by the butt of her weapon slamming into his gut as she rotated the spear-shaft around her arms, staggering him with the impact force. He could have sworn he felt his breastplate crack as she hit him, but that seemed impossible.

“I’m not a copy!”

“Of course you think that!” She countered in disgust, spinning her spear back around and stabbing out at him again, forcing him to parry the attack and fall into a rapid exchange of blows and counter-blows with the Valkyrie. Perdition turned aside, parried, or directly blocked spear strikes with its edges and the flat of the blade; creating a stalemate that took the both of them in circles.

Arcturus was tempted to chain her again, but a glance at his mana told him he had barely six hundred left, and burning through it for a full-body immobilisation he’d barely have enough mana to hold for an extended period was… unjustifiable.

Instead he fought in close, aiming to throw the Valkyrie off through rapid and close-proximity strikes. Rob her spear of its reach, he reasoned, and he robbed her of her comfort zone. Strike after strike, step after step, and he started to faintly detect her pattern. A thrust, then a warding blow, followed by a probing strike, into a feint, with a follow-up short-strike at his torso, and a blow to the legs… there!

Arcturus swept Perdition down and stopped her spear cold, and then reached out to grab Amélie by the breastplate, pulling her forwards. “I’m not a copy!” He growled at her. “I didn’t defy Order and Chaos for you to call me a fake!”

Amélie’s eyes widened fractionally, and the zeal there flickered with doubt for a moment… before returning full-force. “You can’t fool me!” She spat venomously, before wrenching herself free of him and drop-kicking him away, pushing herself back up a second later and grabbing her spear to follow.

Arcturus went staggering backwards and slammed Perdition into the earth to stabilise himself, coughing against the force of the hit. He could feel that she had cracked at least one rib, though how she’d managed to exert that much raw physical power bewildered him. It was staggering.

His head rose and he saw Amélie spin her spin, pointing it at him in challenge before rearing back; only to freeze.

A sudden cry nearby distracted both of them, and their fight paused momentarily as Amélie swung around in alarm. The source of the cry was the third person who had arrived, crumpling to the ground with Caeara standing over them, blades red with blood.

“ALANNA!” Amélie screamed, startling Caeara and Arcturus as well.

Alanna? Arcturus’ eyes widened, and he cursed.

Amélie erupted into motion before Arcturus could force her back into the fight, and Caeara readied herself to fight her, blades held in preparation. Arcturus’ eyes darted over to where Elethea was being healed by Danica, and Andy and Adam were both fighting Leon: Working together to pressure the young Archon hard enough that he had no time to do anything but defend. Between the two of them, they had him locked into a defensive fight, but Arcturus didn’t know how long that would last: Leon’s elemental armour meant he could afford to make a mistake. Adam and Andy couldn’t.

As much as he wanted to help, he knew he had to stop Amélie.

In the near distance, the Valkyrie met Caeara with a scream of rage, and the Adventurer staggered under the force of Amélie’s initial strike; catching herself before she fully overbalanced. Instead of shrinking away, Arcturus watched as the purple-haired Terran engaged Amélie full-force, battling her back in the light of the fires burning around them. Arcturus turned to Elethea and Danica as he ran past, noticing that the former was already looking better under his friend’s ministrations, and then refocused on the fight between Caeara and Amélie.

He watched as the Valkyrie danced back and forth with her, spear scoring several hits, though none more than superficial and easily dealt with by Caeara’s fortitude. He readied Perdition and poured mana into his telekinesis, waiting for a chance to isolate and lock down Amélie while she was focused on Caeara. The adventurer kicked Amélie away and reversed her blades in her grip, stepping forwards to launch into the spinning double-bladed strike she’d perfected in their simulacrum training.

It never came. Instead, Caeara stumbled off-balance and looked down at the ground in surprise.

That was when Amélie’s spear took her through the sternum.

Arcturus found himself frozen as he watched Caeara’s eyes widen, saw her mouth open, and watched the reaction of her body as blood dribbled from her lips and her blades dropped from suddenly numb fingers. Danica’s name was on his lips. He could hear her screaming.

He could hear Elethea’s cries of denial.

Amélie leaned forwards and spat on Caeara’s face, before kicking her off her spear like unwanted trash.

Arcturus’ vision flashed red, then white, and rage erupted inside of him like a bonfire. Perdition went to his left hand and he stormed forwards, closing within ten metres of Amélie. His right was extended as she turned away from Caeara’s body to face him, and he willed telekinetic force to coalesce around her throat, envisioning it as a fully-enclosed vice.

Her blue eyes widened.

Arcturus’ fingers curled inwards.

Amélie’s spear hit the grass beside Caeara’s twitching body, and Arcturus made contact with the girl’s wide, surprised eyes. He saw sadness lurking in their depths.

A tear leaked down her nose, and the light in her eyes died.

Arcturus’ gaze snapped back to Amélie and his entire body shook with sudden and unyielding hatred as his lips parted, and he made his fury known in a throat-rending roar of judgement. The air around him compressed, warped, and demented: The light from the flames seemed to darken and brighten in schizophrenic ambivalence, and he felt blood dripping from his nose again.

Amélie started to turn purple.

Her eyes met his, and he saw only terror within their depths.

The Beast inside his mind snarled for more.

Something slammed into Arcturus bodily, and his telekinetic grip on Amélie was broken as he was driven back and into the ground. He thrashed angrily at the intrusion, lifting Perdition high to end whoever had interrupted his justice: Only to find Elethea’s tear-stained face looking up at him, filled with pain and exhaustion, but also with something more: Something pure, and all for him. Arcturus faltered as the haze lifted, and then felt hands hauling him to his feet by the pauldrons.

“We have to move!” Adam shouted. “Now! Before Fortunis returns, while Valoris is distracted!”

Arcturus looked back to where Amélie was being seen to by Leon, and both of them were watching him with a mix of fury and fear.

Amélie was afraid of him.

Amélie hated him.

He found that he didn’t care.

“I won’t leave Caeara!” He heard himself saying, hearing the rawness of his own voice, and feeling himself fight against his friends as if he were a passenger observing another’s actions. “I won’t leave her! We can save her! We can save her!”

“She’s gone Arcturus!” Danica was saying, her voice cracked with grief. “She’s gone!”

“No! We can’t leave—!”

His vision flashed white, and pain suffused his face. He tasted blood, and heard a ringing in his ears.

Adam’s face filled his vision.

“Enough.” He said softly, as if it was just the two of them. “Enough, Arcturus.”

Arcturus’ eyes fell from Adam to the body of a girl he’d come to love like family, lying alone and forsaken at the feet of her murderer. Because he’d failed. Because he’d been too weak to do what had to be done, and had tried to reason with a woman he no longer knew. The weight of Caeara's death settled on him like a cloak, as surely as if he'd wielded the spear himself. He seared the image of her fading, sad gaze into his soul. He burned it like a brand onto his heart.

It was over.

They had lost.

“Okay.” He said softly, turning as he let them lead him away, and leaving the last vestiges of the boy he'd been in the dirt with a girl he’d called his friend.