Ruth wasted no time.

She rushed at the interloper, claws bared, a snarl escaping her throat as she went in for the kill -- only to be stopped in her path by a wall of flame that sprang from the smoldering remains of the campfire. Beyond the barrier, she could see the smug smirk of her opponent, but just a glance told her she wouldn't be able to withstand those flames. Orange Aether crackled through them, intensifying their heat and ferocity. A single lick from them would leave her with serious burns.

Ruth jumped back as the flamewall surged outwards in her direction, incinerating an unfortunate sapling that happened to be in her path. The tendrils of the wheel-creature snapped from position to position as the flames pursued her -- it was controlling their path without a doubt.

"Miss Ruth!" Ruth heard Serena's cry -- and a second later, the girl came running past her, a massive wooden greatsword dragging through the dirt behind her, kicking up mud and grass as it went.

Ruth's eyes widened: she wasn't just going to go for it, was she?!

Serena may have been something of a ditz, but she was no fool. She stopped just before the flames, feet digging down into the ground -- and swung her greatsword at thin air with all her strength.

The sheer air pressure of the swing slammed into the inferno, smothering the flames for a moment and reducing them to smoke and cinders. The moment the girl's gaze flicked back to Ruth, she understood: a path!

She didn't waste a moment. Baring her crimson-sparking claws again, Ruth rushed towards the man, eyes fixed on his jugular. One little swipe of steel, and this fight would be over.

But he obviously had different ideas. As Ruth leapt through the space the flames had previously occupied, there was a flare of orange Aether -- and a moment later, the wheel-creature shot in Ruth's direction like a great cannonball, an unearthly screech blasting through some hidden vocal cords.

With the speed it was moving, and the force, and the obviously infused Aether, Ruth knew that the creature would shatter her ribs if she let it make impact. Still, she couldn't exactly change the direction she was moving through the air mid-flight. Dodging was not an option.

Instead, she infused her arms with all the Aether they could hold -- and caught the creature just before it could slam into her.

The pain was excruciating. It felt like her arms would snap right off -- she could hear her armour creaking under the strain. The impact redirected her course, too, so that rather than zooming towards her main opponent she landed a small distance away.

The wheel-creature wasn't satisfied with just that, though. It continued to try and force its way out of Ruth's grip, to slam right into her face. As it struggled against her grip, the bony sections that formed the wheel span rapidly, and as they did Ruth could see that they were covered in thousands of tiny, sharp blades.

This thing wasn't just a wheel. It was a damn meatgrinder.

The older man hadn't moved since the fight began. Even though the wheel was preoccupied trying to scrape off Ruth's face, it's tendrils continued to direct flames, creating a barrier that prevented Serena from getting near to him. It was like a tornado of fire, with the man standing in the eye of the storm.

"You understand?" he called out over the roar of the inferno, rolling his r's as far as they would go. "Experiencing that which is greater than you, accepting and understanding it's wisdom and might, despairing in the face of that insurmountable gap…"

His face spread into a wicked grin.

"...that is what it means to educate. Wanyūdō -- Discipline. Drive the lesson home."

Ruth widened her eyes -- as, in response to the man's command, the wheel had begun to glow an incandescent white. She didn't understand what this thing was, how the man controlled it, or what was really going on at all -- but she knew a bomb when she saw one.

She swung around and hurled the creature -- but too late.

The explosion was blinding, deafening, far worse than the campfire had been -- and as it went off, Ruth went flying backwards, her back smashing into a nearby tree, the air forced out of her lungs by the impact. Blood trickled over one of her eyes, forcing her to squeeze it shut, and a persistent pain leaked out from her limp left arm.

Red Aether crackled around her as nearly half her Skeletal Set dissipated, having sustained serious damage in the blast. She now had nothing in terms of protection for her torso or her right arm -- and the plates that protected her legs were one good hit from disappearing too. If she lost those, she'd lose the speed advantage as well.

Serena turned away from the flame-tornado, a gasp escaping her throat.

"Miss Ruth!" she cried -- and in that moment, a small hole opened in the tornado next to her. A second later, a flaming crossbow bolt came surging out of the gap, narrowly sailing past Serena's ear as she dodged -- and a second after that, the gap closed again.

Ruth gritted her teeth as she pulled herself out of the tree, splinters falling to the ground around her as she broke out of the arboreal prison. This man was a coward. He'd only attack when he was certain no retaliation could reach him.

But there was nowhere he could hide from Ruth Blaine.

Serena wasn't having much fun.

This mean guy was just throwing fire at her and she couldn't really do anything to hit him back. She'd dodge a burst of flame, get ready to swing her greatsword, only to realize he was already concealed behind another fiery wall.

She frowned. How was he doing this? She couldn't see him doing anything with Aether, but the flames were moving around like crazy. Was he a magic man or something? A wizard, maybe?

That'd be cool if true. Whenever Serena had asked, Bruno had told her there was no such thing as magic -- but that was probably because Bruno was too cynical to see magic. Maybe if she did good in this fight, the wizard would take her on as an apprentice and teach her how to use magic too.

She ducked underneath a whip of fire, ignoring how it sliced through the trees behind her. What kind of magic would she learn first? This guy was obviously some kind of fire mage, but Serena had no doubt that he could teach other things too. Maybe she could tap into the hidden potential of her bloodline and be the one mage who could use all the elements!

That was only if she accepted being his apprentice, though -- and she'd never do that. He was obviously a bad guy, after all. Good guys never tried to set people on fire, unless they deserved it.

"Do you understand now?" the magic guy laughed, a flurry of fireballs shooting out from his barrier towards Serena. "There was no other way for this encounter to end!"

Serena's eyes widened.

Cott looked away as the Supremacy soldiers bound red Neverwire around Yakob's wrists. Even with the pain of the gunshot, though, Yakob could still shout, still question: "Cott! What the hell are you doing?!"

Cott still didn't look at Yakob, but he replied all the same.

"Sorry," he said. "There was no other way for this to end."

Serena's hand tightened against the hilt of her greatsword with such strength that cracks spread across its surface. This magic man didn't know it yet, but he'd just killed himself with his own mouth.

She fired her body like a bullet directly at the man, ignoring the flame barrier he had erected in front of him. The fire would badly burn her without a doubt, but she would just kill him before the pain knocked her unconscious. He didn't look like much: one good hit would turn him into a smear.

She ran so fast that her foot touched the ground only once -- but that was all her enemy needed. She saw his smug face twist into a sneer.

"Perhaps you should watch your step, hm?"

Beneath her foot, the earth was glowing. There was fire underneath the soil. Fire waiting to escape --

-- and escape it did, in another deafening explosion.

Ruth watched, horrified, as Serena went flying up into the air -- and then as Bruno fell onto a mid-air forcefield, narrowly breaking his descent.

The enemy had tricked them. By showing them only the single wheel-creature, he'd led them to believe that was the only one they had to watch out for. But that wasn't the case at all, was it? Like Ruth had noticed, the flames had continued being manipulated even while the wheel-creature was occupied trying to shred her face off.

"It seems you've lost to me in the battle of wits," the man chuckled condescendingly. "How sad for you. Yes, you, girl!" He snapped his fingers and pointed towards Ruth. "It appears you've figured it out! Top marks! My Guardian Entity is not a single creature, but a pair!"

There was that term again: Guardian Entity. Why the hell did everyone keep saying that like she should know what it meant?

The man put his finger to his lips. "Now," he drawled. "I wonder what I should do. Should I accept your surrender and allow you to continue living? That may be wise, considering you clearly possess an unknown Guardian Entity. In the same vein, though, is it not my duty to punish thievery and execute you? These questions aren't rhetorical, dear -- you're welcome to contribute!"

Ruth seethed as she took another step towards the man, watching as a second wheel-creature emerged from beneath the ground. Angry steam billowed from between the gaps of its bone-plates as it swung around to face her direction.

This man intended to kill them, regardless of what Ruth did. He'd tried to kill them with his first attack using the campfire, and that objective had never changed. All he was offering now was false hope.

She wiped a smear of red blood from her nose. If that was the case, Ruth wasn't going to give him the damn satisfaction.

One last strike. With everything she had.

"Can you do it?" whispered Lily from beside her -- the girl had made her way through the scattered immobile flames, and was now crouched down at her side.

"Do what?" Ruth cracked her knuckles.

"Beat him," Lily hissed. "Kick his ass. If that wheel thing wasn't there, could you do it?"

Ruth didn't even have to think about it. She nodded. "Yeah."

A smirk spread across Lily's face -- and as it did, lines of electric-blue Aether began to emanate from her body. The faintest dim form of some kind of humanoid figure appeared behind her, silhouetted by a lightning halo. Ruth realized with a start that what she was seeing was not electric-blue Aether -- it was actual electricity, coursing through Lily's body as she did… whatever this was.

In the corner of her eye, Ruth saw their enemy take a cautious step back. The wheel, though, rushed towards them recklessly, blades glinting in the light.

"Okay," the girl said through gritted teeth, blood leaking from her mouth. "Here I go. Guardian Entity - Raijū."

There was a moment of silence -- and then a bolt of lightning lanced down from the sky and struck Wanyūdō, stopping it in its tracks. As its inner tendrils jerked and spasmed, the flames surrounding the arena spluttered out -- leaving their master utterly exposed.

"Go!" cried Lily, hacking up a sudden burst of blood.

Ruth didn't waste any time; there was no time to question what had just happened.

With what little armour she had left, she shot forward like a cannonball, rushing past the stunned Guardian Entity and towards its master. The moustachioed man's gasped as his doom approached, but what could he do? He had neither strength nor speed.

She pulled her fist back, roaring with exertion as all the Aether she had left pooled into her knuckles --

-- and then the wall of flame reappeared, right between the two of them. The old man grinned. He thought he was safe, that Ruth's course would now take her right to her own fiery demise.

But Ruth Blaine didn't die so easily. If there was one thing she was good at, just one thing, it was defeating the enemy.

The Skeletal Set encasing Ruth's body vanished in a spark of Aether -- and then all of it reappeared on her punching arm. Every knee and elbow pad, every strip of metal, even the mask that usually covered Ruth's face: all of it was wrapped around the limb, turning it into a humongous club that dwarfed the rest of her body.

If nothing else, it was an arm that could withstand a few seconds of flame.

Ruth plunged the armoured limb through the wall, ignoring the excruciating heat that soaked through the metal, and seized the man by the throat. The little 'what?!' he cried out with as she breached his defenses was the best sound she'd heard all day. Then, she pulled -- dragging the man towards his own infernal barrier.

It didn't take even a second for the flames to disappear -- a coward indeed -- and once they did, Ruth slammed her other fist into the man's face with such force that she was sure she heard his jaw shatter. He fell limp to the floor, unconscious -- and as Ruth glanced behind her, she saw that Wanyūdō too was dissipating into Aether. A job well done.

She let the man slip from her grasp and fall fully into an undignified pile, and opened her mouth to speak -- to say something. The only thing that came out was a yawn.

She really needed a damn nap.